تنمية الانتباه المشترك كمدخل لتحسين النمو اللغوي لدى الأطفال ذوي متلازمة داون
The current research aimed at assessing the effectiveness of developing joint attention among children with Down syndrome in improving their language development. The research sample consisted of (14) children with Down syndrome, divided into two groups, one of them "experimental" (n = 7) who were exposed to the training program and another control group (n = 7) who were not exposed to the training program. The study instruments included Stanford-Penh test of intelligence (fifth ed) the Socio-cultural Level Scale (Prepared by: Abdul Aziz El Shakhas). The researcher developed the joint attention scale, the language development scale and the training program. Through using appropriate non-parametric statistical methods, the research results revealed that there were statistically significant differences between the mean scores of the experimental group members in the pre and post tests on the dimensions of the two scales of joint attention and the language development in favor of the post-test. There were also statistically significant differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control group members in the post test on the dimensions of joint attention and language development scales in favor of the experimental group. However, there were no statistically significant differences between the mean scores of the experimental group members in the post and follow-up tests on the dimensions of the two scales of joint attention and language development. (Published abstract)