The Effectiveness of Portage Early Intervention Program in Improving Adaptive Behavior Skills with Intellectual Disorders

The aim of this study was to find the effectiveness of the Portage Program for Early Intervention in improving cognitive competencies of mothers with children having intellectual disabilities in applying portage program, and in developing those children’s adaptive behavior. The experimental sample included 10 children from Irbid Governorate with simple intellectual disabilities, using single-group experimentation. To achieve the goal of the study, the Portage Program (second edition) was adopted as well as the cognitive competence scale for pre and post-test, and the adaptive behavior scale for children with intellectual disabilities. Data from the implemented scales were treated statistically using proper statistical methods. The study reached the following results: There were statistically significant differences at the level of significance (α=0.05) between the means of the pre- and post-test for performance of mothers of children with simple intellectual disabilities in the cognitive competence scale. There were statistically significant differences at the level of significance (α=0.05) between the pre- and post-test means for performance of children with simple intellectual disabilities in the adaptive behavior scale. There were statistically significant differences at the level of significance (α=0.05) between the post and follow up test means for performance of children with simple intellectual disabilities in the adaptive behavior scale. The study sets various recommendations in the fields of education and research. The results of the qualitative analysis indicated a noticeable improvement in the performance of the adaptive behavior skills of the individuals participated in study.

Variables Affecting Outcome of Early Intervention in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Heterogeneity in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is reflected in the child's characteristics, including clinical variability in the severity of autism symptoms, cognitive ability, and language skills. Also, substantial individual differences are apparent about treatment outcomes. The effects of early intervention in ASD constitute one of the important questions ASD researchers face today. To what extent do factors such as child and family characteristics, intervention approach, and specific treatment components, influence outcome? This review focused on which preintervention factors better predicted outcome in each of the different outcome measures used most frequently in ASD research, including autism severity, cognitive ability, and adaptive behavior skills. For outcome in autism severity, predictors included child's baseline age, cognitive ability, autism severity, and the type of treatment approach used. For cognitive gains, predictors included baseline autism severity, maternal and educational level, and the type and intensity of the treatment. For outcome in adaptive behavior skills, predictors included baseline cognitive ability, autism severity, maternal age, and the treatment approach and intensity. Future studies in this field should expand the scope of factors, look for more specific behaviors, and investigate the interplay between a child's characteristics, familial factors, and various treatment aspects that might affect the outcome of the intervention.

The Relationship Between Sound–Shape Matching and Cognitive Ability in Adults With Down Syndrome

Down syndrome (DS), the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability, is characterised by a pattern of cognitive deficits hypothesised as relating to later developing neural systems. Multisensory integration (MSI) has been shown to benefit cognitive performance on numerous tasks in the typically developing population and is implicated in the early development of various cognitive processes. Given these developmental links of both MSI and DS it is important to determine the relationship between MSI and DS. This study aimed to characterise sound–shape matching performance in young adults with DS as an indicator of MSI (correct response rate around 90% in typically developing individuals). We further investigated the relationship between task performance and estimated cognitive ability (verbal and non-verbal) in addition to everyday adaptive behavior skills. Those answering correctly (72.5%) scored significantly higher across cognitive and adaptive behavior measures compared to those answering incorrectly. Furthermore, 57.1% of individuals with estimated cognitive ability scores below the median value answered correctly compared to 89.5% of individuals scoring above the median, with similar values found for adaptive behavior skills (57.9% vs. 94.4%). This preliminary finding suggests sound–shape matching deficits are relatively common in DS but may be restricted to individuals of lower ability as opposed to being a general characteristic of DS. Further studies investigating aspects of MSI across a range of modalities are necessary to fully characterise the nature of MSI in DS and to explore underlying neural correlates and mechanisms.