Social interaction and learned helplessness in severely disabled children

Abstract

The present study applies the theory of learned helplessness to communicative interaction among severely disabled children using nonelectronic pictographic boards. Data were collected through systematic observation of child–parent and child–teacher pairs in natural environments. A program for teaching the family interaction skills was introduced and interactive patterns in the family before and after the introduction of the program were compared. Interactive patterns within the family and at school were also compared. Our results show that the interaction between children using communication boards and natural speaking adults (both parents and teacher) tended to be dominated by the latter, who occupy more of the conversational space and initiate topics much more frequently. Before the introduction of the program, parent and child responsiveness to each other was low. Increases in parent responsiveness after the introduction of the training program seemed to result in increases in the frequency of responses by the four disabled children in the study. The percentage of parents' open questions also increased after training, which in turn seemed to result in increases in children's board-conveyed utterances. Positive and negative effects of the family program are highlighted. As well, the need for new approaches to enhance the interactive skills of children using communication boards is discussed.

• augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)
• communication boards
• family program
• learned helplessness
• motor impairment
• social interaction