Effectiveness of Interventions for Children with Intellectual Disabilities: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) encounter difficulties in several areas of functioning because of skill deficits (e.g., cognitive, adaptive, and social skills) and/or problem behaviors (e.g., hyperactivity and irritability). Many scholars have attempted to address these problems through various interventions. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on commonly used interventions and their relative effectiveness. A search of three electronic databases (PsycINFO, Scopus and EMBASE) produced 87 articles published between 2004 and 2022. Seventeen peer-reviewed articles written in English from open-access journals met the inclusion criteria. The review identified a variety of interventions commonly employed to help improve the conditions of students with ID. These include play therapy, physical exercise, training, video modelling, computer-based cognitive training, peer tutoring, storytelling, portage early intervention training program, comprehensive reading intervention, and emotional intelligence-based intervention. The synthesis shows that play therapy was the most commonly employed intervention to address target behaviors in several areas (adaptive behavior, social skills, self-esteem, and problem behaviors). Besides, whereas the interventions produced small to large effects, only one produced very small or negligible effects. All the interventions that employed play therapy, in particular, had effects of large magnitude. Play therapy appears to be the most effective and widely applicable intervention to help improve skill deficits and reduce problem behaviors among students with ID. Finally, the paper suggests a direction for future research.