Design and effectiveness of technology enhanced interactive media in teaching social skills for children with autism spectrum disorder

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) demonstrate significant inadequacy in social skills such as initiating and maintaining communication, comprehending social clues and responding according to social context. Therefore, it is one of the priorities to develop these skills in education programs. There are several methods used for teaching social skills to individuals with ASD. It is important to use evidence-based interventions in teaching target social skills. Social stories are one of the evidence-based interventions that are used in teaching social skills to individuals with ASD. Social stories are short, personalized narratives that support individuals with ASD to understand social clues, and explain how to respond appropriately. Thus, social stories are written as a scenario and Multimedia Learning Theory is an appropriate approach to deliver social stories since it supports various multimedia contents. The purpose of this study was to design interactive and non-interactive social stories and compare effectiveness and efficiencies of interactive and non-interactive social stories that are used for teaching social skills to adolescents with ASD. Additionally, the research examines adolescents' maintenance level in the target social skill after the intervention, and further examines generalization of these skills in different settings. The research also examine teachers' and peers' views regarding social validity of the intervention. The research was conducted with four adolescents diagnosed with ASD whose ages ranged between 12-14 and attend to inclusion education. In the research, design-based research and alternative adapted treatment design, which is one of the single subject model research method, were used. Research findings indicated that interactive social stories, when compared to non-interactive social stories, were more interesting and entertaining since they have "interaction, choice making and decision making" features. However, both of social stories were easy to implement and serve for the purposes of the usage. The findings about the efficiency of both interventions regarding acquisition of target behaviors were analyzed graphically. When examined, it was found that subjects acquired social skills through interventions, maintained these skills after interventions and generalized these skills to different individuals and settings. It was found that both interactive and non-interactive social story interventions were effective almost equally with a slight difference, and there was no difference between two interventions in maintenance and generalization among the four participants. When the research findings were examined in terms of efficiency, it was seen that interactive social stories were more efficient than non-interactive social stories in terms of the number of trials/sessions to meet criterion in four subjects and incorrect response numbers. However, interactive social stories were more effective than non-interactive social stories when examined in terms of the total instruction duration that lasted till meeting the criterion in three subjects. According to social validity findings, mothers and teachers of the adolescents expressed positive outcomes for both of the interventions. However, they also expressed that interactive social stories were more entertaining, active and provided an explorative learning context than non-interactive social stories; therefore, children might have learned target skills faster. Peers of the adolescents expressed that they felt happy to participate in the research and it was beneficial to put effort for their friend with ASD. Additionally, peers of the adolescents with ASD expressed that it was useful for both peers and the class to cooperate for skills such as playing, spending time, participating in group activities, learning what to do in difficult situations. Keywords: ASD, Social skills, Social stories, Technology enhanced interactive media design.