The Effectiveness of Family-Based Psychological Interventions on the Intelligence of Children with Down Syndrome

 There is a very clear difference between the actual capacity of potential intelligence and the potential cognitive potential of children with Down syndrome, and their current mental capacity is always subject to change and correction. family-based psychological interventions emphasize the increasing cognitive function of children with the participation of parents and family members. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of family-centered interventions on the intelligence capacity of primary school children with Down syndrome. The research design was semi experimental and pre-test-post-test with control group. The statistical population included all 10 to 11students with Down syndrome in 2016-2017 academic year. Among them 30 were selected by purposive sampling and randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. The experimental group received family-centered interventions for three months (Two sessions a week). The research instrument was the new version of Tehran-Stanford Binet's intelligence scale (Afrooz and Kamkary, 2006), which was performed in both pretest and post-test. The use of  multivariate covariance analysis method in SPSS application, The findings showed that family-centered psychological interventions not only increased the intelligence score of these children, but also leads to increased non-verbal and verbal intelligence, fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial processing, and working memory in Down's syndrome students (P<0/01). Also, it can be said that family-based psychological interventions can be effective in improving the cognitive function of children with Down syndrome in verbal and non-verbal areas.