Comparative Effects of Teaching Social Skills through Direct Instruction and Cognitive Approach on Behavioral Problems in Students with Educable Intellectual Disability

Behavioral problems are common in educable intellectual disability students. The purpose of the present study was comparison of the effects of direct instruction and cognitive method on social skills in individuals with mild intellectual disability.

A semi-experimental study was conducted with pretest-posttest and control group. A total of 30 students with mild intellectual disability were selected based on available sampling and were randomly divided into three groups (two experimental groups and one control group). First, behavioral problems and social skills scores were collected using Gresham and Elliott social skills questionnaires (1990). Next, participants in the experimental group were individually trained for 20 sessions: one group received cognitive approach and the other group received direct instruction. After trainings, the Social Skills Questionnaire was administered again among teachers and parents. The data were then analyzed using analysis of covariance method in SPSS19.

The results showed that from teacher's perspective, social skills training through cognitive approach and direct instruction did not significantly decrease behavioral problems, but from parent's perspective, cognitive approach significantly decrease behavioral problems and direct instruction did not.

According to the findings, it can be stated that training programs that focus on understanding total situation and social cue encoding have more impacts on behavioral problems in educable intellectual disability students.