The Effectiveness of Enriching Family Relationships (with Parents' Participation) on Social Skills and Alexithymia of Students with Specific Learning Disorders

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of enriching family relationships (with parents' participation) on social skills and alexithymia of students with specific learning disorders.

The research method was a semi-experimental pre-test-post-test type with a control group. The statistical population of this research was made up of all the students with specific learning disorder who had referred to the learning disorder center in Ardabil city in 2022. Among them, 30 students with specific learning disorders and their parents were selected as samples through available sampling and randomly placed in the experimental and control groups. The experimental group received the educational package of enrichment of family relationships but the control group did not receive any intervention during the implementation of the intervention. Before and after the implementation of the intervention, the students responded to Matson's social skills (1983) and Toronto's alexithymia scales (2006). Analysis of the obtained data was done through multivariate covariance analysis by using SPSS-26 software.

The results showed a significant increase in the mean of social skills and a decrease in the mean of alexithymia of the experimental group after the implementation of the intervention. Also, the mean of social skills and alexithymia in the experimental and control groups were significantly different

It can be concluded that the implementation of the family relationship enrichment package has an effective role in improving social skills as well as reducing the problems of emotional inadequacy and symptoms of alexithymia, so the use of this package is recommended for children with special learning disorder.