Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Education, Special, Rehabilitation, Education & Educational Research, LEARNING-DIFFICULTIES, METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES, ADULTS, 1303 Specialist Studies in Education

Abstract:

This study explores the occurrence, content, feelings and types of reminiscence in ageing people with mild/moderate intellectual disabilities. It searches to find out whether and how ageing people with intellectual disabilities think and talk about their past, what themes arise during their reminiscences, and why they talk about these memories. A limited number (n=10) of people with mild or moderate intellectual disabilities were interviewed. Transcripts were analysed in depth. Results show that reminiscence, whether in a verbal or non-verbal form, occur regularly or often in our sample of participants. Most frequent themes of reminiscence were 'important others', 'work/education' and 'living at home'. The content analysis further resulted in a rather large variety of negative themes, which can be directly or indirectly related to the individual's disability. Instances of all types of reminiscence, derived from the taxonomy of Watt and Wong (1991), were found. The results feed the assumption that reminiscence theory is also applicable to ageing persons with a mild/moderate intellectual disability.