A Tool to Improve Visual Attention and the Acquisition of Meaning for Low-Functioning People
Students with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties in social interaction and communication, social skills and acquisition of knowledge. Individuals affected by low-functioning autism are not able to manage the level of abstraction that the use
- PDF / 1,306,322 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 439.37 x 666.14 pts Page_size
- 32 Downloads / 165 Views
udents with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties in social interaction and communication, social skills and acquisition of knowledge. Individuals affected by low-functioning autism are not able to manage the level of abstraction that the use of language requires. Besides, in the most severe cases they have problems in recognizing representations of objects from the real world. In order to intervene in these aspects, it is necessary to facilitate the learning of the processes of the acquisition of meaning, associating the meanings to signifiers at the visual and verbal levels. We have designed a computer-assisted tool called SIGUEME to enhance the development of the perceptive-visual process and the cognitive-visual process. We have performed a pilot study of the use of SIGUEME by 125 children from Spain, including an evaluation based on pre/ post testing. This study suggests significant improvements in children’s attention span. Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder · Low-Functioning autism · Technologybased intervention · Cognitive skills
1
Introduction
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a set of complex neurodevelopmental disorders with diverse levels of disability, varying from very mild to very severe. People with ASD are characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication along with restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behaviours, interests, and activities [1]. Among the problems that can occur with autism, mental retardation is the most wide‐ spread. People affected by low-functioning autism or mental retardation cannot use appli‐ cations such as alternative and augmentative communicative systems or educational games because they have problems in recognizing the representations of objects from the real world [2] (a representation can be an image, photo, colour picture, B&W picture, silhouette, pictogram, a video of the object in movement, a written word or a video in sign language of an object). Experts in ASD and educational professionals report the lack of tools to facilitate the learning of the processes of the acquisition of meaning and a low interest from
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 K. Miesenberger et al. (Eds.): ICCHP 2016, Part II, LNCS 9759, pp. 234–241, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-41267-2_32
A Tool to Improve Visual Attention and the Acquisition of Meaning
235
students using traditional materials. In addition, another key factor is that these work methods are followed without adapting their content to motivate each individual child. In order to intervene in these aspects when working with low-functioning people with ASD we have designed a computer-assisted tool, SIGUEME, composed of six incremental phases. Our main goals are to get the user’s attention and help users to generalize from a specific real object. This learning is designed to be systematic, gradual and repetitive. Exercises or games in SIGUEME include different representations to interact with them and to evaluate if the person is recognizing them.
2
State of the Art
There
Data Loading...
