The Effect of Social Interactions on the Acquisition of Conservation Concepts in Children with Mild Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

stimulating cognitive advancement in abstract tasks among a group of children with mild intellectual disabilities. Furthermore, we sought to examine the significance of this type of interactive dynamic, which may assist these children in constructing and/or reconstructing knowledge-particularly with regard to the concept of conservation- during the developmental stage in which the initial logical operations are acquired. This investigation is grounded in the theoretical framework of the social psychology of cognitive development, based on the models of Trognon (1999) and Doise & Mugny (1981), and follows a pre-test/post-test experimental design. To this end, we adopted a Descriptive–Analytic Approachof results in order to uncover the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of various cognitive concepts. The study was conducted on a sample of 20 children with mild intellectual disabilities, aged between 8 and 13 years, selected from the Ali Ramli School in Ben Aknoun.

The results revealed that mild intellectual disability impacts the acquisition of conservation concepts. Moreover, the hypothesis was confirmed, demonstrating the effectiveness of symmetrical peer social interactions in stimulating cognitive progress in conservation tasks.