Uppeldi og menntun - 01.01.2000, Side 144

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 babies 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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