Effects of social-emotional skills training for young adults with intellectual disabilities

Social-emotional learning is essential for the vocational, social, and personal success of people with intellectual disabilities. A major component of social-emotional learning is emotion recognition, or the ability to identify emotions in yourself and others using characteristics such as facial expression, body language, and tone of voice. This study examined the effects of social-emotional learning training through combined explicit instruction, including computer-assisted instruction, video modeling, and role-plays to teach students how to recognise emotions in themselves and others based on associated characteristics. Participants included six young adults diagnosed with mild-moderate intellectual disabilities and other comorbid conditions, ranging in age from 18-29. A multiple-probe single-subject design was used to evaluate changes in the participants’ emotion recognition skills across baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases. Results showed improvement in emotion recognition skills, as demonstrated by an increase in scores from baseline to intervention phase, with an average of 8.46% during baseline to 81.75% at the end of intervention across all six participants. Maintenance, generalisation, and social validity measures also demonstrated positive long-term results.