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
 No
condition
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