Alive, Awake, Alert, Enthusiastic: A Correlational Study on the Social Competency and Therapy Enthusiasm of Children with Down Syndrome

Abstract

One of the most important features of childhood is the child's ability to acquire different social skills that will play a significant role when they grow up and for them to be accepted in the society. This characteristic is referred to as the child's social competence. However, children with Down syndrome have notable difficulties in their social skills resulting to them becoming stigmatized and thus hindering further social development. To cope, this requires regular therapy sessions to help them acquire age-appropriate social skills and be socially-competent individuals. This study was conducted to determine the relationship between the social competence of children with Down syndrome and their enthusiasm in therapies that particularly utilizes Behavior Modification Techniques (BMT). Moreover, the study also aimed to identify these children's level of enthusiasm during therapies, as perceived by their parents/primary caregivers, as well as their strengths and weaknesses in terms of the three domains of social skills that will determine their social competence, namely: social interaction, social manners, and selfhelp skills. The study involved 30 children, aged 6-10, diagnosed with Down syndrome whose parents/primary caregivers were given a set of self-reported questionnaires. These questionnaires were categorized into two scales: the social competency scale with three sub-domains of social skills and the enthusiasm scale. The data obtained were analyzed thru the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), using Pearson correlation coefficient to obtain the descriptive and correlational values of the variables. The qualitative data provided by the respondents revealed that these children are generally friendly, happy, behaved, but have tendencies to be manipulative and exhibit temper tantrums. The respondents also reported that all of these children were currently enrolled in Special Education classes. In addition, all of these children exhibited language delay that is why 73% of them were presently undergoing therapy with speech pathologists along with other therapies such as occupational therapy, physical therapy and psychotherapy, for their specific needs. For the quantitative data of this study, the results suggested that there is a positive correlation between the children's social competency and their level of enthusiasm at (+0.75a), as hypothesized. The study also revealed that children with Down syndrome, aged 6-10 years old, have a "slightly high" level of enthusiasm during therapies that utilizes BMT. Consequently, it was also identified that these children generally excels in their social interaction skills but significantly needs improvement in their social manner skills. It was then concluded in this study that for children with Down syndrome to have an evident social competence, they must exhibit at least a slightly high enthusiasm in their therapy sessions.