Browsing by Author "Suursalmi, Tiia"

Aims. The aim of this study was to evaluate the process of Nele and Noa in rainforest - intervention and to examine the influence of the implementation on executive function skills (EF) on children with intensive special education needs. Executive function skills play an important role in different parts of life. According to previous research children with intensive special needs have difficulties on executive function skills, but there are different methods to support these skills. Nele and Noa in rainforest-intervention contains individual tasks and pair -and small group games which support EF skills. Previous research shows that the effectiveness of intervention is influenced by duration and intensity of the program and the program needs to be properly and accurately implemented. The way intervention is carried out has an influence on executive function skills, so it is important to study this issue on this research too. Methods. This study involved a total of 26 pupils with intensive special education needs, who were in an experimental group in the Nele and Noa in rainforest –intervention program. The experimental group performed individual tasks and played the pair and small group games of Nele and Noa in rainforest –intervention three times a week for six week period. Individual information about the intervention progress was collected on a form and executive function skills were tested on a computer based Modified flanker task –test before and after the intervention. Implementation of the intervention was analyzed with SPSS-program and comparisons between groups were analyzed with Mann-Whitney U -and Kruskalin-Wallis tests. The effects of intervention on executive function skills were analyzed with regression analysis. Results and conclusions. There were great individual differences in time use and in the amount of sessions completed. Comparisons between groups showed that the integration group and higher grade-levels performed statistically significantly more tasks and games and they made more difficult tasks and games than other groups. Reaction time in shifting developed statistically significantly in the experimental group. The amount of pair and small group sessions influenced positively on this section of executive functioning, but the time consumed on pair and small group games and the amount of easy games influenced negatively on reaction time in shifting. As can be noticed, methods of implementation can influence on EF, but general conclusion cannot be drawn based on this study.