Get Your Coat: Examining the Development of the Independent Living Skill of Dressing in Young Children with Visual Impairment, Young Children with Down syndrome and Typically Developing Children

Dressing is a fundamental independent living skill (ILS). Vision is an integrative sense which affords a sighted individual to learn via observation. Visual impairment (VI) denies or restricts access to learning via sight. As a result of this reduced access, children with VI and conditions where VI may be a component (e.g. Down syndrome (DS)) require systematic and structured support to develop independence skills. This mixed-methods, repeated measures intervention study examined the effectiveness of novel intervention materials on the development of independent living skill of dressing (ILSD) in young children. N=27 (age range: 5-11 years) participants were drawn from three samples: VI (n=9; age range: 5;05 – 10;02 years); DS (n=9; age range: 5;05-10;00 years); and, Typically Developing (TD) (n=9; age range: 6;05-8;00 years). The effectiveness of the intervention materials was measured within and between the three outlined groups over a 10 week period. The assessment of the longer-term impact was made 1 and 3 months post-intervention between and within the VI and TD groups. This paper reported that the novel intervention materials did aid the development of ILSD in all three groups. Clear and systematic verbal instruction combined with motor activities were useful in supporting ILSD. The findings could form a model for future work regarding the development of ILS in other skill areas and in relation to other clinical groups e.g. Williams Syndrome