Effectiveness of Individual Narrative Therapy with Specialized Adaptations in Children with Intellectual Disability – Pre-Post Experimental Study
Abstract
Background: The present study analyzed the effectiveness of Narrative Therapy in developing narrative proficiency in Children with Intellectual Disabilities.
Objective: To determine the effect of story retelling and narrative comprehension with Narrative Therapy in children with Intellectual Disability
Methodology: The study employed a within-subjects design. The study sample included participants diagnosed with a mild level of Intellectual Disability. The study involved ten participants (N = 10), comprising five males and five females, whose mental age ranged from four to six years. The sample was recruited using a nonprobability purposive sampling technique from Amin Maktab and Rising Angel's institutes in Lahore from January 2023 to January 2024. Multilingual Assessment Intervention for Narratives (MAIN) assessed story retelling and comprehension. The therapy lasted for eight weeks. Each participant had twenty-four sessions of intervention.
Results: The data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed rank test to report the pre- and post-evaluation scores. The results, which included macrostructural and microstructural analyses, showed a marked improvement in narrative abilities post-intervention, with p < 0.05.
Conclusion: The study's findings, which revealed a significant increase in story retelling and comprehension scores of narratives after the intervention, underscore the effectiveness of narrative therapy in developing narration abilities in children with Intellectual Disability.
Keywords: Narrative Therapy, Intellectual Disability, Microstructure, Macrostructure
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