Teaching functional reading skills to children with autism via tablet PC program

The difficulties children with autism have in paying attention, processing and retaining information affect their academic success negatively. Therefore, it should be considered that presenting education using visual stimuli to school-age children with autism has a positive impact on their academic achievement (Heward, 2013). Reading and writing skills play an important role among the academic skills. Reading and writing skills contain many cognitive processes. For autistic children, reading and writing processes are quite complex and can be harder to fulfill than it is for children with normal development. Therefore, teaching functional reading skills is more meaningful to them. Autistic children need to sustain particular words in their everyday lives, whether or not they are able to read and write. Learning particular words will make it easier for them to act independently at school, at home or in society. For this reason, teaching functional reading skills allows them to be independent at key areas such as decision making, spending leisure time and becoming self-sufficient. Researches conducted with autistic children in Turkey usually focus on social and communication skills (Eliçin & Diken, 2011). In determining the purposes of this study, the following were taken into account: technology-supported learning applications have a positive impact on children with autism, and there are no studies on teaching functional reading skills to autistic children in Turkey. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of teaching functional reading skills through a tablet computer program to children with autism. Four students (ages 5-7) with autism participated in an evaluation of tablet computer instruction that targeted functional reading skills. The effectiveness of the software were analyzed in the context of a multiple probe design across settings, and replicated across participants. The findings were analyzed graphically. All participants mastered all the skills they were taught via the tablet computer and generalized this. Suggestions for future research directions are discussed.