Skills and social interaction of children with Down's syndrome in regular education

This study identifies the process of social interaction of children with Down’s syndrome (DS) in the regular educational system of a city in the interior of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Six children aged from three to six years old participated in the study. Each child was videotaped in four situations of social interaction in two distinct environments (indoors and outdoors), which enabled the analysis of interpersonal and self-expression skills through the observation of 15 types of behaviors. The results reveal that the behavior type “Interacts with another child”, within the category “interpersonal skills”, was the most frequent both indoors and outdoors with an average of 27.5 and 28.3, respectively. With regard to “self expression skills”, only the behavior “Smiles” had a considerable number of occurrences indoors with an average of 8.16, while the behaviors “Smiles” and “Imitates other children” presented significant occurrence outdoors with averages of 5.16 and 3, respectively. The conclusion is that including children with DS in the regular educational system promotes new forms of learning and interaction for them through daily contact with children with typical development, enabling them to acquire social interaction skills.