The Effectiveness of Emotional Intelligence-Based Intervention on Enhancing Adaptive Behaviors of Educable Intellectual Disabled Children

Abstract

Emotional development in children with intellectual disabilities, from a comparative perspective with "normal" children is a study that has emerged as a need to deepen knowledge in this area.Therefore, the current study aims at investigating the effectiveness of emotional intelligence-Based intervention on enhancing adaptive behaviors of educable intellectual disabled students. To achieve the study objective, Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (VABS) was used to assess educable intellectually disabled children in their personal and social function.The final sample included 15 educable mentally retarded children in Kuwait. Means of chronological age at the date of assessments were 7.3 with age ranging between 6.6 and 8.2 years.The quasi-experimentaldesign with a pre-test, post-test and follow-up testhas been adopted for its suitability for the current study. Results of the study showed that there are statistically significant differences in the mean scores of the experimental and control groups in the post-test of Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale in favor of the experimental group. Whereas, no statistical differences were detected in the mean scores of the experience group in the posttesting and follow-up testing of adaptive behavior due to the lack of further experimental treatment. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that emotions awareness-based strategies, such as multiple intelligences-based intervention, should be extensively used with children with intellectual disability alongside their disability degree; mild, moderate, severe and profound, as well as autistic children.