The use of a tablet application to develop the social interaction skills of children with intellectual disabilities

Abstract

With technology creeping into every corner of our life with the purpose of making everyday tasks more efficient, education is no exception. Technology could and should help with improving the speed and quality of education. Teaching social skills is a task which is perhaps somewhat overlooked in the education industry, meaning that when technology is to be implemented in education, it is generally focused on being applied to enhance academic skills. Social skills can be defined as the necessary behavioural components which are important for one to correctly carry out interactions, and in doing so does not cause physical or psychological harm to others (Spence 1983). Social Skills Training (SST) was derived from a number of approaches which assume that social behaviour can be taught using a number of structured teaching methods. Some of these methods include homework tasks, discussion and modelling (Spence 1983). This Final Year Project aims to apply the use of technology to the teaching of social skills to children with intellectual disabilities, focusing on the core skills required to behave within the social norms of society, in a number of key social situations, such as classroom behaviour, which form a part of these children’s daily lives. This goal was achieved through the creation of an Android application whereby alongside their LSEs, the children are provided with an innovative, interactive platform through which they are able to practice their social skills. This is accomplished via a set of social stories, whereby for each social story, a child is presented with three different illustrations. One of these illustrations is the correct way to behave, whereas the other two illustrations demonstrate incorrect behaviour. The child is prompted to choose which illustration they think presents the correct behaviour. Gamification techniques, such as rewards and encouraging sound effects, are incorporated into the application to increase the child’s level of engagement and motivation. The illustrations were displayed through the use of video-based instruction, which is defined as the creation of videos by teachers to be used in a classroom environment, in such a way that the teacher is in control of the exact, tailored content which is presented to each student. Past researchers have proven that video-based instruction can be used successfully to help adolescents with intellectual disabilities develop social skills (Plavnick, Kaid, & MacFarland 2015). The application was evaluated following a set of feedback forms and surveys which were carried out with LSEs which ranged from two schools. More than one school was used for the evaluation of this study so as to nullify any form of bias that could have been present in any single school. The unfortunate, unforeseen global pandemic left a negative impact on this study, as one of the two schools was forced to drop out of the study halfway, meaning that six LSEs carried out the study from start to end, as opposed to eleven. It also meant that the application endured two iterations with the LSEs, as opposed to three.