Effect of Social Skills Training on Social Self- Empowerment and Alexithymia in Students with Specific Learning

Specific learning disability is one of the most common disorders in school children. These children usually have problems in various areas such as attention, cognition and alexithymia. The purpose of the present research was to determine the effect of social skills training on social self- empowerment and alexithymia in students with specific learning disabilities.
This study is an experimental research. The population of this research includes all elementary students with specific learning disabilities in Rasht city during the academic year of 2016-2017. From this population, 30 students were selected by random sampling method and assigned to two experimental and control groups (15 students in each). The 10 sessions of social skills training were implemented for experimental group while the control group received no intervention. To collect the data, Social Competence Scale (Flener et al., 1990) and Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Bagby et al., 1994) were used before and after training.
The results of multivariate analysis of covariance showed that social skills training significantly improved social self-empowerment and reduced alexithymia in the students with specific learning disabilities (P Inability in social self- empowerment and alexithymia in children with specific learning disabilities, emphasizes the need to redouble the social skills, so social skills training were improve child's identity, acceptance of social roles, responsibility and Irrefutable conflict.