Social Skills in Students with Intellectual Disabilities, Autism, Learning Disabilities and Normal Students

The purpose of present study was to examine social skills in students with intellectual disabilities, autism, learning disabilities and normal students.

Method of this study was survey research. In this research 225 elementary students including 67 students with learning disabilities, 62 students with intellectual disabilities, 30 students with autism and 65 normal students were randomly selected the sample. Social skills were measured into 5 components: appropriate social skills, inappropriate behaviors, aggressiveeness and impulsive behaviors, overconfident and relativity to peers. MANOVA and ANOVA were used to analyze the data.

The result showed that: (1) students with retardation and autism had a significant difference with normal students on the component of appropriate social skills, (2) on the component of inappropriate behavior, aggressiveness and impulsive behaviors only students with learning disabilities had a significant difference with normal students, (3) on the component of overconfident and also peers, only students with autism had a significant difference with normal students.

Accordingly, we can conclude that student with intellectual disabilities, autism, learning disabilities and normal students had significant difference in different social skill components.