M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / Social interaction plays a key role in children’s social development and learning. Hence, social interaction is important for everyone, including individuals with intellectual impairment. Researches such as Vygotsky, Dockett and Perry (2003) has shown that opportunities for social interaction for people with intellectual impairment can facilitate increased community integration, improved quality of life, greater sense of life-satisfaction and wellbeing, the development of friendships, and increased social skills. I engaged with relevant literature in order to understand the characteristics of children with intellectual impairment and their social functioning. My theoretical framework was based on a socio-cultural theory. The research was conducted at a school in the East Rand region of Gauteng that caters for children with intellectual impairment. The sample of participants that participated has played a prominent role in the school concerts and their age range between 12 years and 23 years old, with intellectual impairment as their primary disability. A phenomenological research design was followed so as to understand social and psychological phenomena from the perspectives of the people involved, in how they experience the school concert. Data was collected from various participants form the school’s environment, such as educators, the identified participants parents/caregivers, support staff the participants themselves. I conducted unstructured and semi-structured interviews, such as focus group discussions and individual interviews, with participants, parents/caregivers, educators, and support staff (speech therapist). After the research was conducted, the central findings about the research is the use of creative expressive arts helps children with intellectual impairment to become more focussed and increase their communication skills, developing a sense of self and building relationships. The school concert boosted their self-esteem and their confidence, improving their social interaction.

In South Africa children are required to testify under oath or admonition. The shortcomings of the competency test are of particular relevance to children with developmental disabilities, since courts are not equipped to adequately assess the competency of these children to give evidence. One component of testimonial competency, namely the understanding of the concepts truth and lies, is overemphasised and is examined with questions that are developmentally inappropriate for child witnesses in general. For children with cognitive disabilities, such questions create barriers for participation in the truth-seeking process. Consequently, convictions have been set aside on appeal owing to procedural irregularities found in the implementation of this test. In the literature review on testimonial competency, attention was given to restrictions that specific developmental disabilities impose on the perceptual, cognitive, communication and moral development of children. Two of four components – narrative ability and moral capacity – were studied in a sample of 184 children in middle childhood. Participants’ ability to give coherent and detailed accounts of events, their understanding of the concepts truth, lies, promises and the oath, and the Lyon and Saywitz oath-taking competency test, were investigated. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used for data analysis. Three groups were identified: those children with very limited, average or full testimonial competency. Their capacities were found to be related to maturation of cognitive functions and level of intellectual functioning. Participants were better able to demonstrate their understanding of truth and falsity by responding to the oathtaking test than giving verbal descriptions of these concepts. Whereas 1 percent of participants had a conceptual understanding of an oath, 15 percent understood the concept of a promise. Syncretism and confabulation compromised the narrative accounts of a substantial number of participants. Syncretism relates to immature narrative ability: correct details are combined in an illogical fashion. Confabulation refers to filling memory gaps with fabricated information. Guidelines on the competency determination of children with developmental disabilities were compiled. It is suggested that the competency examination be replaced by a formal, pre-trial competency assessment. The court should also receive expert evidence on how to facilitate meaningful participation when a child with sufficient testimonial competence is the witness.

This study explores similarities and differences in turntaking structures in the discourse of a group of typical children and one atypical child. Nineteen normally developing pre-school children and one atypical child were videotaped reading books with their parents. Each of the nineteen parent/child dyads were videotaped at the child's pre-school, and the atypical child (Ben) was videotaped at school both with a trained educator and with his mother. Analyses of the resulting videotapes yielded categorical data on types and structures of turntaking. The utterances of the typical children appeared most often in the category of response. This finding also applied to Ben when he was interacting with his teacher, although when Ben was interacting with his mother the majority of his utterances appeared in the category of imitation. Parents of the typical children used primarily responses, mands and turnabouts. The greatest difference between Ben's mother and the other parents is found in the categories of response and mand which were lower in the case of Ben's mother. It appears that conversational turntaking in a language delayed child is different from the pattern of conversational turntaking in a group of typical children. If indeed the This study explores similarities and differences in turntaking structures in the discourse of a group of typical children and one atypical child. Nineteen normally developing pre-school children and one atypical child were videotaped reading books with their parents. Each of the nineteen parent/child dyads were videotaped at the child's pre-school, and the atypical child (Ben) was videotaped at school both with a trained educator and with his mother. Analyses of the resulting videotapes yielded categorical data on types and structures of turntaking. The utterances of the typical children appeared most often in the category of response. This finding also applied to Ben when he was interacting with his teacher, although when Ben was interacting with his mother the majority of his utterances appeared in the category of imitation. Parents of the typical children used primarily responses, mands and turnabouts. The greatest difference between Ben's mother and the other parents is found in the categories of response and mand which were lower in the case of Ben's mother. It appears that conversational turntaking in a language delayed child is different from the pattern of conversational turntaking in a group of typical children. If indeed the difficulty lies with interaction, or turntaking skills, this may have significant implications for approaches to remediation used with children who are identified as autistic or severely learning disabled. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

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The purpose of this study was to explore the unique experiences and specific needs of single parent families while assessing their level of stress raising a developmentally disabled child.

Behavior-specific praise has been shown to increase rate of desired behaviors for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, though it is rarely used by caregivers in residential facilities for adults with disabilities. Prompting in the form of tactile stimulation has been demonstrated to increase rate of behavior-specific praise delivered by teachers and caregivers. The purpose of the current study was to increase the quantity and quality of behavior-specific praise statements that were delivered by caregivers to individuals at a large residential facility for adults with disabilities. A tactile prompting device (Gymboss Interval Timer and Stopwatch) was provided to the caregivers and set to vibrate for one second at intervals of five minutes, for a total of six intervals. Instructions were provided to the caregivers to deliver behavior-specific praise statements, for appropriate behaviors, to their assigned clients every time a vibration occurred. Examples of behavior-specific praise statements were provided to the caregivers before each session, but no feedback was delivered during the prompting phase. Results indicated that a tactile prompting device was effective at increasing rate of behavior-specific praise statements delivered by caregivers in as little as one session.

The problem addressed in this study was how staff working in a residential agency for individuals with an intellectual disability (IID) make decisions about how to implement a healthy diet. The purpose of this study was to identify the influences on decisions made by staff on the meals they provided to their clients with an IID. The theory of planned was used to study the influences of attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control on the meals provided for IID. The key research question explored how staff members make decisions. A qualitative case study design was used. The 12 participants in the study represented 3 levels of personnel (cases) in a residential agency that served the IID population. Individual interviews were conducted, and within-case and across-case analyses were employed utilizing the theory to note similarities and differences in meal planning, preparation, and implementation. Pattern matching was used to compare results from the study with previous research findings. Results showed that clients had a greater influence over meal planning, preparation, and delivery, particularly those with higher cognitive levels. This was true across all levels in the agency and consistent with prior research. Recommendations for further study include studying similar agencies in different regions and whether providing staff with additional knowledge about meal planning makes a difference in meals provided to IID. Social change can be implemented by using the information from the study to develop a preliminary intervention plan to accommodate the needs of IID and assist staff in developing nutritious meals.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a research approach that benefits from the expertise of community members being involved in the research along all stages of a project (Israel et al., 2003). CBPR is often utilized with marginalized populations in order to amplify a community's voice on important issues in their lives (Bastida, Tseng, McKeever, & Jack, 2010; Minkler & Wallerstein, 2008). In the past, persons with disability have been excluded from research in order to protect them from exploitation. This practice of exclusion undermines opportunities for persons with disabilities to be independent and make decisions that are important for themselves and their communities. Exclusion also limits the generation of new knowledge that can benefit them (McDonald & Keys, 2008). Through involvement on a CBPR project, persons with disabilities are given the opportunity to become empowered within the context of the project (Atkinson, 2004; Oden, Hernandez, & Hidalgo, 2010). This study examined empowerment definitions, evolution of empowerment definitions, and facilitators and barriers to community partners with and without disabilities becoming empowered through their work on a CBPR project. Overall, community partners' definitions of empowerment related to individual and setting-level characteristics. Individual-level empowerment was defined as self-efficacy, self-esteem, control over decision-making, and disability rights advocacy. Facilitators to empowerment within the CBPR process were promoting inclusion, promoting an accessible partnership, sharing of power within and between groups, and actively sharing and gaining knowledge within and between groups. Inaccessible communication, inaccessible language, and lack of project ownership were identified as possible barriers to empowerment. In most cases, empowerment definitions remained stable across one's work on this project, but there were instances of positive change in the lives of some community partners who expressed being empowered through the partnership. CBPR provides an opportunity for persons with developmental disabilities to be included in the research processes as well as possibly gain important qualities throughout, such as empowerment. This study situated the individual's empowerment beliefs and behaviors within the CBPR setting, identifying both facilitators and barriers, and provides support that a CBPR process can be empowering for community partners. Future research in collaboration with community partners should continue to focus on empowerment in all stages of the research project, local collaborations, and continued diversity of community engagement in research. Engaging in a formal reflection process and documenting the process for other researchers to learn from diverse barriers and facilitators to empowerment is encouraged.

Through two presented experiments, I investigated the relationship between the development of non-arbitrary relational control on a) degree of incidental acquisition of both the listener and speaker components of naming (Inc-BiN), b) arbitrary derived relations, and 3) joint attention for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In Experiment I, three preschoolers with ASD or developmental disabilities were selected based on their incidental acquisition of the listener component of naming (Inc-UniN). The study explored the effect of non-arbitrary relational teaching across the frames of coordination, distinction, comparison, opposition, and hierarchy on the degree of Inc-BiN for familiar and novel stimuli under the brief condition (Inc-BiN) and the number of correct responses on taught and novel non-arbitrary relations during the pre- or post-intervention probes using a concurrent multiple probes design. All three participants successfully acquired the discriminative function of contextual cues across the five frames for non-arbitrary relations. However, there was no improvement in the degree of Inc-BiN across all three participants. In Experiment II, three new preschoolers who demonstrated Inc-UniN with familiar and novel stimuli at the onset of the study went through the non-arbitrary listener/speaker MEI procedure across different frames to improve their abilities to derive arbitrary relations for coordination, distinctive, and comparison relations, advance the degree of the Inc-BiN with familiar and novel stimuli, and facilitate joint attention skills through a concurrent multiple probe design. The results showed a functional relationship between the non-arbitrary listener/speaker MEI procedure and the participants’ correct listener and speaker responses during derived arbitrary relational assessments across different frames. However, there was no effect on the degree of Inc-BiN or joint attention responses across all three participants after the intervention.