Uppeldi og menntun

						BOÐSKIPTI   MIKIÐ   FATLAÐRA   BARNA

ABSTRACT

The subject of this article is to introduce results of a study on communication

between three severely disabled children, aged 6, 10 and 14 years old, and their

mothers. The objective of the study was two-fold. The first was to reveal the com-

municative skills used by severely disabled children and how one might react to

their patterns or signs. The second was to observe the usefulness of a Nordic obser-

vation profile, originally developed for the deaf-blind, in evaluating communic-

ative skills of the three children.

The results of the research indicate that the communicative patterns used by

severely disabled children are comparable to the ones observed in the interaction

between babíes and their parents. These patterns appear for instance when the

children have eye-contact, in their breathing, movements, mimicking, smiling or

crying. The mothers of all three children responded and reacted to those com-

municative patterns in the same way as mothers generally do to their babies. The

interaction of the mothers and their children participating in the present research

was characterised by trust and a deep emotional relationship. Furthermore, the

results indicate that those categories on which the profile is based will be useful in

the future evaluation of the communicative skills of severely disabled children.

Guðrún Stefánsdóttir

er skorarstjóri þroskaþjálfaskorar

Kennaraháskóla íslands.

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