Presenter : LEELA AGNES Co presenter : Prof. Dr. Thiruvalluvar : Prof.Dr. Prabakar Immanual

Deafblindness  Deafblindness is a unique disability  The term deafblindness means a person who cannot see and cannot hear  Is a combination of both vision and hearing loss Multi Sensory Impairment  When children have severe developmental problems in addition to their deadblindness they are known to have multi-sensory impairment. Many of these children will also have a wide range of other disabilities/Challenges – such as learning difficulties, epilepsy, feeding problems and severe disabilities.

Difficulties in finding out information Difficulties in communicating Difficulties in moving around

 Heterogeneous condition  No two deafblind children are identical  Each child needs individual based assessment and remedial plan

 Children learn their social skills mainly through vision and hearing  Human beings enjoy being part of social world  Children understand social world around them and decide the quality and content of social life  Emotional behaviour and personality traits are mostly molded by the experiences gained by the child

 Children learn, think about and interpret experience. This is based on self, family and surroundings  This process of learning leads to cognitive functioning and is called social cognition

 Proceeds from concrete to abstract  Grows and gets organized with age  Learned by children when they associate their behavior to the behavior of significant others  Learned by children as they gain skills to communicate and develop interacting relationships

 Presently not much is done to assess the social skills and social cognition of deafblind/MSI children  Hence we have taken a research study to assess the social skills of deafblind/MSI children

 Self esteem  Achievement motivation  Feeling of helplessness  Attribution retraining  Self definition based on self-image

 Understanding social situation  Social problem solving  Social behaviour  Pro social responses These are big challenges to deafblind/MSI children

 Tool is developed using literature survey  Using existing tools for non-disabled  Listing the factors indicating social skills functioning  Interrelating challenges faced by deafblind/MSI children in gaining social skills

 Peer relationships  Self management  Compliance skills  Communication and language skills  Academic related skills

 Functions as if no one is around  Functions as if she is in his own world  Do only things that pleases herself  Do activities that result make her meet her own needs  Fails to follow social procedures while other in the same age follow the same  May behave as if unaware that care giver is in the same room or place

 Become quite, withdrawn or reserved if some one else get sad,upset or cries  Offers comfort to others when they appear sad or upset or crying  Smiles and looks pleased to verbal praise or praise  When praised, can do an activity  When reprimanded shows interest to repeat an activity.

 Uninterested in trying to do new things just to earn approval of others  Does not copy actions or attitude of others  Does not readily learn by being shown by others  Low level of interest in peers  Do not show interest to participate in group games  Doesn’t show interest to learn somethings from surroundings/ peers

 Stops an action when you shake the head no (or )tell no (or )tactually indicate no  Stops an action, seeing others or listening to others or getting an indication  Stops action when a serious no is said or stern look is given or strongly communicated through tactual action  Knows a head nod of yes is an indication of acceptance

 Uses fingers/ hands to indicate or point what he wants  Knows to use smile to indicate happiness, joy and acceptance  Can use spoken language for social needs  Can use sign language for social needs  Can use tactual communication for social needs

 Understand nouns (names) than Verbs (actions)  Has difficulty to comprehend in context of social situations  Can figure out social situation and express appropriately  Use words to meet his immediate needs  Doesn’t use words to comment on interesting things or social events.

 Can use words-but do not converse as part of social functioning  Can look at while communicating  Reciprocate to some of the words-to indicate clarity of understanding of conversation  Use unrelated words while communicating

 Very Positive response to touch and movement  Do not show interest in tactile communication  Likes to touch every things before knowing what it is  Shows fear of something-having impact on social needs

 Show interest to play with others  Looks for opportunities to play  Likes to play with toys,materials suitable to his age  Willing to share toys or go to peers for play

 This check list is now went through the process of pilot study  The check list will now assist the researcher to measure the social skills of at least 30 deafblind/MSI children  The researcher will also assess the language/speech/communication levels of these children

 Correlation between scores of social skills and language/speech/communication will guide us to measure the impact of language/speech/communication skills on social functioning  Such a correlation will guide teachers, parents and service deliverers to know the needs of deafblind/MSI children and then plan appropriate individual based services to deafblind/MSI children to gain social skills and live a successful social life

 Social skill assessment is a continuation of the total assessment  It only help parents/teachers to focus on the social skills as part of academic and individual based intervention  Hence the researcher hopes special educators, SSA educators,programme planners, therapists and parents can gain valuable information of the social skills needs of deafblind/MSI children

THANK YOU