A Social Skill Training for Persons with Down's Syndrome

Abstract

Social skills are generally considered essential to adjustment processes in school and working life, and to the social mainstreaming of both disabled and nondisabled subjects. The definition itself of learning disabilities considers deficits in interpersonal relationships as essential to a disability diagnosis. With reference to Behavioral Social Skills Training (SST), a program was devised to teach social abilities to an experimental group of subjects with Down's syndrome attending the first years of a vocational school for disabled youths. The program is made up of ten didactic units aiming at increasing the ability to enact positive relational behaviors with teachers and peers, and ten didactical units aiming at favoring generalization. Evaluation of training effectiveness, carried out according to criterion tests, direct observations, and teachers' evaluations, suggest that the program can in fact improve the social skills of persons with Down's syndrome.