Teaching developmentally disabled people self-regulation in sexual behaviour

Abstract

According to Whitman (1990) developmental disabilities are characterised by deficits in acquiring new behaviours, generalizing these skills, discriminating appropriate contexts in which to engage the strategies, and evaluating the actions. However, it is claimed that all of these deficits can be overcome by training and doing so will work towards the development of self-regulation. Since self control is considered important with regard to sexual behaviours, Whitman's conceptual analysis is applied to training appropriate sexual behaviour in developmentally disabled individuals. The self-regulation perspective is offered to guide the application of the principle of normalization to sexual behaviour.