The Effectiveness of Game Therapy on Deaf Children's Social Adaptation and Communication Skills

Objective Deafness is a disorder with many individual and interpersonal negative consequences. Therefore, proper measures should be taken to identify and implement effective programs and strategies to reduce the problems of these people. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of play therapy on deaf children's social adaptation and communication skills.
Materials & Methods This research was a quasi-experimental study. The study population included all elementary deaf students in the city of Sari in 2011-2012. According to statistics, they comprised 40 students and the entire selected community were included in the study. Out of 40, twenty were randomly assigned in the experimental group and 20 in the control group. The experimental group were treated by game therapy during 12 weekly sessions. The study instruments were Social Skills Rating Scale and Skills Test-Revised communication were used to collect data.
Results Descriptive statistics and scores of each communication skills and social adaptation of deaf children participating in this study indicated that the participants in the experimental group had a better improvement than the control group participants (P<0.05). Also, the results of covariance analysis showed that play therapy significantly improved the mean scores of communication skills and social adaptation in the experimental group compared to the control group. In other words, in deaf children, the effectiveness of play therapy in increasing social adjustment and communication skills is significantly more than non-treated control group.
Conclusion Play therapy is an effective way to improve the social and communication skills of deaf children. Therefore, in the area of working with deaf and hearing impaired children, experts and health professionals can use play therapy as an effective way to improve their social adaptation and communication skills, given the physical problems of these individuals and their limitations