Browsing by Author "Sinivaara, Heidi"

Objectives. The aim of this study was to examine the development of cognitive, language and play skills of special needs children, who participate either in integrated special group or in a regular group receiving the help of early childhood education special needs teacher. The three research questions were: 1. What kind of differences appear when comparing the development of children with special needs in the integrated special day care group and children with special needs in a regular day care group with the support of early childhood education special needs teacher, with subquestions a) what were the differences between peer children, children in the integrated special day care group and regular day care group special needs children at the start of the study, b) what differences appear in the development of skills in different status groups? 2. What kind of differences appear between girls and boys? 3. How do the skills of peer children and special needs children advance? This study utilizes the Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) to discuss children’s social attachment and the effect of peer interaction. This study is a part of LASSO-project. Methods. The study was conducted by combining two sections of the LASSO-project. The data consisted of parts of the WPPSI-III and NEPSY-II intelligence and neuropsychological tests and Play School Play Behavior Scale. These tests were used to measure children’s cognitive, language and play skills. The children were between three to seven years old during the study (N = 366). The data was analysed with repeated measures two-way ANOVA, non-parametric Friedman’s, Kruskall-Wallis -, Mann Whitney U -tests and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient with SPSS 25 -tool. Results and conclusions. The study revealed that there were differences in the development of different group forms and between status groups. The peer children were ahead in skill development when comparing them with group form or status group. The children who received the support of early childhood education special needs teacher had better skills comparing to the children in integrated special day care group. The children with severe disabilities had the lowest scores among status groups. There was a positive albeit mediocre correlation between cognitive and language skills as well as positive correlation between social play variable and cognitive and language skills. Based on the results it would seem that special needs children could benefit being in a regular day care group with the support of the early childhood education special needs teacher.