The purpose of this study is to observe the effects on communication skills in the children with developmental delay via the program for promoting communication skills by picture books and art play activities. The subjects of the study were three children with developmental delay, who were from Y integrated kindergarten in K city and were diagnosed with developmental delay. And all of them are one year more delayed than their peers from PRES and K-CDI(Korea-Child Development Inventory: K-CDI). The researcher conducted the intervention phase with each individual via the program for promoting communication skills by picture books and art activities. Each session was 30 minutes long and held three times per week in a comfortable art room: 28 sessions with Child A, 25 sessions with Child B, and 22 sessions with Child C.
Multiple probe baseline across participants was used to prove the effect of this study, and it was conducted in this phase order: baseline-intervention-maintenance. The occurrence frequencies in collected materials were recorded with event recording for the results. For the procedure, the researcher used each picture book repeatedly 2-3 times in a total of 10 books, and the intervention phase was conducted to promote the communication in requesting and responding in the process of drawing, decorating, and making with multisensory media related to art activities according to contents and roles in the picture books.
The results of this study are below:
First, the program for promoting the communication skills in the children with developmental delay by picture books and art activities had positive effects on requesting (requesting objects, requesting behavior) of the children with developmental delay.
Second, the program for promoting the communication skills in the children with developmental delay by picture books and art activities had positive effects on responding (accommodative responding, rejective responding) of the children with developmental delay.
Therefore, this study has a signification in applying this program to the children with developmental delay who have difficulties in concentration, motivation and spontaneous communication skill. And it suggests that the program in this study is applicable to the future educational arena as a valuable educational program for promoting communication skills in requesting and responding of the children with the developmental delay.