The effect of occupational therapy on numeric concept and money usage for elementary school students with intellectual disabilities

• Main Authors: Chang, Fang-Tsyr, 張芳慈
• Other Authors: Chen, Shu-Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/e52u92

博士 === 臺北市立大學 === 教育學系 === 106 === 　　It has become an important issue that disabled student go back to live in community based on the tendency of normalization, deinstitutionalization, mainstream, and inclusive education. So, the status of the independent living adaptation of disabled students should be prepared. It is also the main concern that disabled students’ participation in social activities and implementation on acceptable social roles in the field of occupational therapy. However, a satisfactory life adaptation depends on good independent living skills. The purposes of this study were to examine the abilities of money usage influenced by numeric concept abilities for elementary school students with intellectual disabilities in daily living, to find out how numeric concepts influence the use of money, and to analyze the different functional levels on using money among different impairments on intellectual disabilities. The final goal was to help the students can live with maximal independence in daily living. 　　The single subject experimental design with multiple probes across behaviors design was utilized in this study. The case observation was also used to understand students’ learning processing and the relationship between the numeric concepts and use of money. The subjects of this study were six elementary school students, including four students with mild mental retardation, one student with moderate mental retardation, and one student with severe mental retardation. The independent variable was the number training activities of occupational therapy, and the dependent variable was the performance of use of money of the　subjects in unit immediate effects, cumulative effects, maintainable effects, and generalized effects. 　　Four units were designed for training, including “recognizing coins and bills”, “exchanging coins and bills”, “counting coins and bills”, and “using coins and bills in simulative shopping scenario”. The “using actual coins and bills” was applied for generalization unit. The period of training program was lasted for consecutive 36 sessions for subjects with mild mental retardation and 37 sessions for subjects with moderate and severe mental retardation. There were 40 minutes in each session. The data analysis included for baseline, intervention, maintenance, and generalization. The data were analyzed by visual analysis and C statistic. The data of case observation was also collected for qualitative analysis and the feedback from questionnaires completed by teachers and parents was summarized for social validity. 　　Quantitative and qualitative findings for this study were concluded as follows： 1.The occupational therapy activity focused on number training could enhance the immediate effects and cumulative effects of money use by six elementary school students with intellectual disabilities. 2. There were good maintainable effects when six elementary school mental retardation students learned the skills of using money by means of the number training activity in occupational therapy. 3.The ability of money use could be generalized in six elementary school students with intellectual disabilities even the occupational therapy training programs were removed. 4.The teachers and parents of the subjects were undoubtedly satisfied with the results and with positive attitudes. This indicated that the research had a high social validity support. 5.The mild mental retardation students had the abilities to buy few items with low price independently, but had difficulty to purchase many items at a time. They might miss some items and have wrong calculation to total price. 6.The moderate mental retardation student has already learned to sum the coins within 100 dollars, to exchange the coins within 10 dollars, calculate to total price within 20 dollars, and pay the money of 1 or 2 items within 50 dollars under the supervision. 7.The severe mental retardation student has already learned to sum the coins within 20 dollars, to exchange the coins within 10 dollars, calculate to total price within 20 dollars, and pay the money of 1 or 2 items within 20 dollars under the supervision. 8.The abilities of mathematical calculation on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and word problem solving abilities were the main factors that influence the use of money in mile mental retardation students, while the lacking in numeric concepts resulted in poor abilities of the use of money in moderate and severe mental retardation students. 　　According to the results mentioned above, some recommendations for teachers’ teaching, parents’ counseling in daily living, and future researches were proposed.