Background and Purpose: Students with intellectual disabilities are among those who are weak in the ability to cope with social problems and encounter many problems when confront with social situations. The purpose of the present study was to compare the social problems solving ability in girl students with intellectual disability and normally developing peers.
Method: The research method was causal-comparative study. The sample size of this study included 134 subjects (67 students with intellectual disability and 67 normally developing students) that subjects with intellectual disability were selected by convenience sampling method and normally developing subjects were selected by multi-stage random sampling method from public and special education centers. Social problem-solving inventory-revised (SPSI-R) (D’Zurilla et al, 2002) was used to gather of data. The collected data were analyzed using independent t-test and multivariate analysis of variance.
Results: The results showed that girl students with intellectual disability and normally developing peers had a significant difference in the total score of social problem solving ability and its subscales (P<0.01). This means that students with intellectual disability in the total score of social problem solving and its subscales were weaker than normally developing peers.
Conclusion: Therefore, it can be concluded that intellectual disability, in addition to the negative effect on cognitive function, also affects social development. Therefore, the teaching of the ability to solve social problems to students with intellectual disabilities in different environments as well as the empowerment of their families is necessary.