The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of a group fine art therapy on improvement of intellectually retarded children's sociability. For this purpose, the researcher tested the effects of the group fine art therapy to provide a groundwork for development of the fine art programs conducive to improvement of intellectually retarded children's ability of social adaptation.
To this end, the researcher reviewed preceding studies, relevant literature and government statistics theoretically, and thereupon, set the fine art therapy as independent variable and ability of social adaptation as dependent variable, and thereby, tested the therapy for the children attending researcher's Disabled Children Protection Center and its teachers to analyze the relationship between the therapy and children's ability of social adaptation.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows;
First, it was found that the group fine art therapy was effective in improving intellectually retarded children's social adaptation. Namely, the children could convert their working style from individual work to cooperative work, understand the specific rules of fine art activities, compromise with their peer group through joint use of the materials, and exchange the opinions with their peer group through painting activities. In short, the group fine art therapy helped them to recognize others well and adapt themselves to the human relationship in a desirable way. In addition, since the children were encouraged to converse metaphorically with others and express their desires through fine art works rather than instructed cognitively by the teachers, they could start an indirect conversation with their peer group and then, establish a relationship with their peer group at a safe level to improve their social adaptation.
Second, the group fine art therapy helped the intellectually retarded children to change themselves significantly in terms of 'aggressiveness,' 'anti-social trait,' 'habits,' 'symptomatic behaviors' and 'human relationship.' Namely, since the experimental group children showed significant adaptative changes in terms of 'symptomatic behaviors,' it could be confirmed that the group fine art therapy had a therapeutic effect on improvement of children's maladjustment.
Fine art therapies play a role of compensating and recovering the symptomatic behaviors, and therefore, they have been used much in the psychological treatments. Recently, maladjustment correction programs have been included in special school education curriculum. However, the maladjustment correction programs should be included not only in the regular educational activities but also in school life, classroom activities, extracurricular activities and even in home life.
Intellectually retarded children differ from the normal children only in terms of intellect and adaptation, so they are able to establish a mutual relationship with others. Drawing on such aspect, it is necessary to continue to develop and systematize the programs conducive to their adaptational improvement.