Teaching Students with Severe Intellectual Disabilities Non-Representational Art Using a New Pictorial and Musical Programme

A recently developed pictorial and musical programme was used to teach non-representational (abstract) art to students with severe intellectual disabilities, and to regular students as a control group. A 2 (two levels)×2 (three levels) ANOVA was used to test three hypotheses. The dependent variable was the quality of non-representational art. The independent variables were the type of student (special or regular) and the type of teaching programme (pictorial only, pictorial with rock music, or pictorial with classical music). The sample consisted of 12 primary age students with severe intellectual disabilities from a special school and 12 regular Year 2 (7 year old) students. There were no significant interactions. There was a significant main instructional effect favouring pictorial with classical music over both pictorial only and pictorial with rock music. There was a significant main effect for the type of student favouring regular students over special students for both pictorial only and pictorial with classical music