Expert Assessment of Socio-Psychological Competence of Adolescents with Developmental Disabilities

Introduction. Modern society places increased demands on skills and abilities in interpersonal interaction. However, adolescents with various developmental disabilities demonstrate a reduced ability to interact with others. This paper: (a) concentrates on studying socio-psychological competence that ensures the effectiveness of subject-subject interaction; (b) introduces the original technique developed by the authors which studies the specific characteristics of socio-psychological competence; and (c) presents an experimental study that compares socio-psychological competence of adolescents with normative development and of those with such developmental disabilities as mental retardation, visual impairment, and hearing impairment. Methods. This section describes the criteria for determining the sample and its characteristics and explains the advantages of expert evaluation method used for studying personality constructs in adolescents with developmental disabilities. Results. This section presents the content of the technique developed by the author and describes the stepwise procedure for its development including verification of reliability of the technique and its individual scales and standardization of results by individual sub-scales for determining their corresponding levels. The results of expert assessment of adolescents' socio-psychological competence confirm that intellectual ability in individuals with sensory impairments enables the development of their ability to interact, while low intellectual ability in adolescents with mental retardation complicates formation of their socio-psychological competence. Discussion. The author identifies and describes cognitive-emotional, emotional-regulatory, and instrumental-operational components of the socio-psychological competence in adolescents and the system of their personal resource organization. The results suggest that compared to adolescents with sensory impairments, those with mental retardation demonstrate the lack of flexibility, behavioral immaturity, and low capacity for self-control and orientation in interpersonal interactions. The proposed technique for studying socio-psychological competence based on expert assessment has a great applied potential.