Planning ability in adolescents with intellectual disabilities

A boy with post-it notes.

Adolescents with intellectual disabilities are dependent on an adult helping them with planning their everyday activities. Improving and enhancing their own planning ability could increase these youths´ independence in their every day life.

Computerized training program
The aim of this project is to develop a practical way to support and improve planning ability in adolescents with intellectual disabilities. The project will do that by introducing a cognitive planning aid in the planning situation as well as training a cognitive strategic way of planning via a computerized programme. The project will also broaden the theoretical knowledge base on how adolescents plan and how to support and improve that cognitive ability.

Dealing with everyday planning
Adolescents with intellectual disabilities have difficulties with managing everyday life tasks that includes planning. Two ways to compensate for this difficulty is to either train internal cognitive processes or to provide external assistive technological aids. These two types of compensations are commonly used but have not yet been investigated in how their effect interacts and best combines. 

Researchers