Research On Prosocial Behavior Of Children With Intellectual Disability

Children with intellectual disabilities are a group in disadvantage circumstance with significant limitations in both intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior,whose social integration is an important issue that cannot be avoided in the process of building a harmonious society,and it has touched on the academic,practical and policy fields.It is not only the demand of promoting social integration,but also the inevitable demand of the times of fully implementing the national policy and promoting the quality of education for children with intellectual disability to improve their endogenous force to adapt to society by various ways.Oriented by the pattern of support and the idea of quality of life in the definition and education of intellectual disability,developing adaptive behavior to replace the problem behavior has become the new tendency to solve the problem of social adaptation of children with intellectual disabilities.As an active social behavior,prosocial behavior is an important content of children’s social development and one of the important symbols of children’s good adaptation,which can promote subjective well-bing and qulity of life.Therefore,systematically exploring prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disabilities has important theoretical and practical significance both for enriching the theoretical system of social adaptation and for promoting the social integration of children with intellectual disabilities and improving their quality of life.The current research attempted to explore sysmatically prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disability from the aspects of internal structure,assessment tools,development characteristics,influence paths,and intervention approaches through three parts of empirical study which were composed of five sub-studies.PartⅠ was divided into two sub-studies which aimed mainly to explore the current situation of prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disability in the phenomenological level.Study 1 explored the structures of prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disability and developed the Prosocial Behaviror Questionnaire.Study 2 investigated the characteristics of prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disability by the formal questionnaire developed by study 1.PartⅡ consisted of two sub-studies which aimed mainly to explain the occurrence and development of the prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disability in the mechanism level.which explored the influence effect and mechanism of teacher-student interaction sub-ecosystems and peer interaction sub-ecosystems under the context of school environment on prosocial behavior based on the theory of bioecological model of human development and the structure model of prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disability by using the method of questionnaire and experimental research and path model technology.Part Ⅲ aimed to explore the strategies and approaches of improving prosocial behavior in the intervention level,by trying to build a set of prosocial behavior intervention plans based on the results of PartⅠand Ⅱand examine the effectiveness of the intervention plan through the experimental study.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)Prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disability is a multi-dimensional and multi-level construct comprised of seven first-order factors including altruism,abiding by the rules,complying with customs,improving relations,maintaining relations,agreeableness and pleasantness,four second-order factors including altruism,abiding by the rules and commonweal,relationship and personal trait.The self developed Prosocial Behaviror Questionnaire for Children with Intellectual Disability(PBQCID)had good internal consistency reliability,construct validity and content validity and can be used as an effective tool for further research.(2)In general,prosocial behaviors of children with intellectual disability could be sorted into the moderate level,there were significant differences in the internal indicators,in the first-order factors,the scores of abiding by the rules were the highest,the scores of agreeableness were the lowest;in the second-order factors,the scores of biding by the rules and commonweal were the highest,the scores of personal trait were the lowest,There is an acceleration period from primary to junior middle grade and a buffer period from junior to high middle grade.Girls’ scores are higher than boys’.Low function autism is significantly lower than other kinds of intellectual disability,overall there was no significant difference in prosocial behavior,but in some factors,there were significant differences among Down syndrome(DS),general intellectual disability(ID)and cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilits(CP),DS,ID and CP were higher than intellectual disability with other disabilities;children with mild intellectual disability were higher than those with moderate intellectual disability who were higher than those with severe intellectual disability.Children from comprehensive special education school were significantly higher than those from the school for children with intellectual disability.(3)The teachers’ psychological capital and expectation in the environmental level and empathy in the individual level in teacher-student interaction sub-ecosystems were positively correlated with children’s prosocial behaviors.children with intellectual disability showed a moderate level in empathy,there were significant differences in the internal indicators,cognitive empathy is significantly lower than emotional empathy.Teachers’ psychological capital was above the moderate level as a whole,differences in the internal indicators were significant as well,confidence was the highest,optimistic was the lowest,which meant there were still much room to improve.Teachers’ psychological capital has a significant positive prediction function on prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disability.Only through teachers’ expectations could teachers’ psychological capital work.Teachers’ expectations and children’s empathy multiply mediated the effect of teachers’ psychological capital on prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disability.(4)The main effect of peer relations in the environmental level was significant,the level of children’s prosocial behaviors in the accepted situation were higher than that in the rejected and controled situation.emotion in the individual level fully mediated the relationship between peer relations and children’s prosocial behavior.Empathy in the individual level had a positive predictive effect on the prosocial behavior solely.Differences in the block variables of grade and degree of disabilities were significant,it was necessary to divide children into groups according to grade and degree of disabilities.(5)The overall level of empathy and prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disabilities had been significantly improved after a comprehensive prosocial behavior intervention based on empathy training,.Comprehensive intervention had a significant role in promoting the development of different factors of empathy and pro-social behavior in children with intellectual disabilities,but it took longer to improve the level of cognitive empathy.The effect of comprehensive intervention on empathy and prosocial behavior of children with different degrees of disabilities was different.The empathy and prosocial behavior of children with mild intellectual disabilities could be improved fastest.The empathy and prosocial behavior of children with severe intellectual disabilities can also be improved significantly,but it took a long time.In general,it was feasible and effective to implement comprehensive intervention based on empathy training for prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disabilities.The research established and verified the second-order four factors and first-order seven factors model of prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disability based on the orientation of empirical analysis and the new perspective of prototype theory,developed a s quantitative assessment tool which is suitable for the prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disabilities in China,described the status of prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disabilities deeply and detailedly,and concise their typical characteristics,constructed the influence model of the school ecosystem to children with intellectual disabilities and revealed the specific path of interaction between variables,Finally,constructed and tested the comprehensive intervention model for prosocial behaviors of children with intellectual disabilities based on empathy training.This research not only provides a new perspective and analytical idea for the empirical research on prosocial behavior of children with intellectual disabilities in the context of China,but also provides a tool basis for further research in this area.The results of the series of research provide a wealth of data for comprehensive and profound understanding prosocial behaviors of children with intellectual disabilities,a large number of basic data for future research in this field,and solid empirical references for the education practice of prosocial behavior and deepening social adaptation education reforms for children with intellectual disabilities.