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Abstract

Children with autism have difficulty in solving social problems and in generating multiple solutions to problems. They are, however, relatively skilled in responding to visual cues such as pictures and animations. Eight distinct social problems were presented on a computer, along with a choice of possible solutions, and an option to produce alternative solutions. Eight preschool children with autism and eight matched normal children went through 10 training sessions interleaved with 6 probe sessions. Children were asked to provide solutions to animated problem scenes in all the sessions. Unlike the probe sessions, in the training sessions problem solutions were first explained thoroughly by the trainer. Subsequently these explanations were illustrated using dynamic animations of the solutions. Although children with autism produced significantly fewer alternative solutions compared to their normal peers, a steady increase across probe sessions was observed for the autistic group. The frequency of new ideas was directly predicted by the diagnostic category of autism. Results suggest young children with autism and their normal peers can be taught problem-solving strategies with the aid of computer interfaces. More research is required to establish whether such computer-assisted instruction will generalize to nontrained problem situations in real-life contexts.

Engagement with Electronic Screen Media Among Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…The auditory ''soundtrack'' tends to be closely synchronized with the visual stimulation, and this multimodal information flow may assist the viewer in the coordinated processing of information (Quill 1997). Viewing of ESM can be accomplished without interference from another person, and ESM options typically do not make ''demands'' on an individual with ASD (Bernard-Opitz et al 2001;Shipley-Benamou et al 2002).…”

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

“…Therefore computer-based applications are considered to be useful tools for therapeutic and educational purposes. For example, applications have been developed to train social skills [5]. They can work on their own pace and level of understanding.…”

New Educational Challenges and Innovations: Students with Disability in Immersive Learning Environments

“…Other systems used were: a dialog program by means of bubbles where the user can think and talk to the main characters of various social situations [48]; virtual desktop environments aimed at allowing ASD children to have a working environment where they can learn to organise the tasks that these children must do at home after returning from school, with two modes: the 'training' mode, very passive and in which the child had to familiarise with the environment; and the environment and mode referred to as 'late', where the child carried out the activities and navigated and interacted with the 2D and 3D objects present in the environment [49].…”