Habilidades sociais e problemas de comportamento de alunos com deficiência mental, alto e baixo desempenho acadêmico Social skills and behavior problems in students with mental retardation, high and low academic performance

As habilidades sociais vêm sendo amplamente reconhecidas como importante componente do processo de escolarização especialmente dos alunos com deficiência mental. A revisão da literatura evidencia escassez de pesquisas que focalizam a inclusão desses alunos no sistema regular de ensino. Considerando tal situação, este estudo teve como objetivos: avaliar e comparar o desempenho social (habilidades sociais e problemas de comportamento) e acadêmico de alunos, com deficiência mental, incluídos, em relação a seus colegas de alto e baixo rendimento acadêmico (AR e BR, respectivamente). Trinta professores avaliaram 120 alunos (40 com deficiência mental incluídos no ensino regular, 40 AR e 40 AR) da pré-escola à oitava série por meio do Sistema de Avaliação de Habilidades Sociais, na sua versão adaptada para o Brasil (SSRS-BR) por BANDEIRA et al. (s.d.). Os dados foram analisados estatisticamente e os resultados mostraram que: no desempenho acadêmico, os três grupos diferenciaram-se significativamente, com o AR mais positivamente avaliado, seguido pelo BR e depois pelo DM; nas habilidades sociais, AR apresentou escore acima da média normativa diferenciando de BR e DM, estes somente se diferenciaram nos fatores de Assertividade e Autodefesa; nos problemas de comportamento, AR apresentou escore abaixo da média normativa, diferenciando-se dos dois outros grupos; que não se diferenciaram. As evidências de dificuldades acadêmicas e interpessoais, tanto do grupo BR como DM, sugerem concomitância destas variáveis e aponta similaridades nas necessidades educativas desses dois grupos, o que reforça a importância das habilidades sociais para o sucesso e a inclusão escolar.<br>Social skills have been widely recognized as important components of the schooling process, especially for students with mental deficiency. A review of the literature has shown scant research focusing on these students' inclusion in the regular school system. Considering this situation, the present study aimed: to evaluate social performance (social abilities and behavior problems) and academic achievements of students who were included in the regular school system, by comparing students with mental deficiency with their peers who had high and low academic achievement (HA and LA, respectively). Thirty teachers evaluated 120 students (40 with mental deficiency included in the regular system, 40 with high and 40 with low academic achievement) from preschool to the 8th grade elementary level using the Social Skills Rating System, originally produced in the United States (Social Skills Rating System, SSRS, by Gresham & Elliott, 1990) in its Brazilian version (SSRS-BR) adapted by Bandeira et al. (n.d.). After descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, the results showed that: concerning academic performance, the three groups showed significantly differences. The HA had the highest scores, followed LA and finally by MD; regarding social skills, HA scores were above the standard average, differing from LA and MD; these last two groups differed only as to the Assertiveness and Self-defense factors. Considering behavior problems, HA scores were below the standard average, differing from the two other groups which showed no difference between groups. Academic and interpersonal difficulties for both groups LA and MD suggest concomitance of these variables, pointing to similar educational needs for both groups, which reinforces the importance of promoting social skills for success in school and for an effective inclusion process

Modeling of GERDA Phase II data

The GERmanium Detector Array (GERDA) experiment at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory (LNGS) of INFN is searching for neutrinoless double-beta (0v/3/3) decay of 76Ge. The technological challenge of GERDA is to operate in a "background free" regime in the region of interest (ROI) after analysis cuts for the full 100 kg"yr target exposure of the experiment. A careful modeling and decomposition of the full -range energy spectrum is essential to predict the shape and composition of events in the ROI around Q,3,3 for the 0013 search, to extract a precise measurement of the half-life of the doublebeta decay mode with neutrinos (20/3) and in order to identify the location of residual impurities. The latter will permit future experiments to build strategies in order to further lower the background and achieve even better sensitivities. In this article the background decomposition prior to analysis cuts is presented for GERDA Phase II. The background model fit yields a flat spectrum in the ROI with a background index (BI) of 16.04 0:8785 " 10-3 cts/(keV"kg"yr) for the enriched BEGe data set and 14.68 0:4527 " 10-3 cts/(keV"kg"yr) for the enriched coaxial data set. These values are similar to the one of Phase I despite a much larger number of detectors and hence radioactive hardware components