The social-emotional functioning of young children with a significant cognitive and motor developmental delay

Abstract

Children with a significant cognitive and motor developmental delay (SDD) are vulnerable for the development of (future) behavioral and mental health problems. This paper aims to assess the social-emotional functioning of these children, both globally and in various domains. Semi-structured interviews with one or more primary caregiver(s) of 45 children were conducted and analyzed on 13 domains of social-emotional functioning, according to the Scale for Emotional Development - Revised (SED-R). The SED-R scoring system was slightly adapted in the current study in order to elucidate more subtle differences between children. A general delayed social-emotional development was found, with children functioning within different phases across domains and certain domains generally showing higher or lower scores. To capture the emotional needs of children with SDD, a more disaggregated scoring system seems valuable so that both the global level and the level per domain can be taken in consideration in designing interventions.

Keywords:

• social-emotional development
• social-emotional functioning
• SED-R
• PIMD
• profound ID
• multiple disabilities
• young children with a significant cognitive and motor developmental delay
• interviews

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all participating families for their time, effort and enthusiasm. Also, we are immensely grateful to Gertruud Schalen, Kristien Hermans, Lien Vanderkerken, Minou Nauta, Riëtte Krijgsheld and Stephy Colla for their contribution to the broader project in which this study is embedded. This work was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Children’s primary caregivers were defined as his/her parent(s) or as a professional caregiver from the residential care organization if the child resides there on a regular basis.

2 A core criterion for the demarcation of the group of persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD), is the presence of a profound intellectual disability (IQ below 20) or a developmental age below 2 years (Kraijer and Plas 2007, Nakken and Vlaskamp 2007). Since establishing reliable IQ-scores in young children with a significant developmental delay is extremely challenging, the measurement of intellectual functioning with standardized, individual intelligence tests is typically done in children of approximately five years or older (Weis 2014) and defining a developmental ‘plateau’ (i.e. developmental age below 2 years) is not useful at a very young age, we do not think it is justified to use the term ‘PIMD’ in this study and we opted to use the description ‘significant cognitive and motor developmental delay’.

3 In 2016, a further revised version of this instrument was published (SED-R², Morisse and Došen 2016). However, at the time of the data collection of this study, this version was not yet available.

4 In the current research, sometimes not all 13 domains were scored and thus included in data analysis (because of missing information or because the domain was not applicable). In that case, the median of the remaining domains was still used as the global level of functioning. If the amount of domains was even, the lowest phase was chosen.