By
Yi Ma
Sherry Berry
Loretta Benjamin
April 29, 2008
Introduction
Autism occurs in varying degrees. Some persons with autism function very well and others do not. “Pervasive development disorders”, Individuals with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) have a unique set of symptoms that affect three areas of domains”: communication, socialization, (interaction with others), and behavior.
Autism disorder and other PDDS are due in large part to genetic factors. In some instances, autism disorder is a feature of an identifiable genetic condition. More frequently, however, no underlying specific cause can be determined (that is called idiopathic autism meaning autism of unknown). There is a great deal of evidence that idiopathic is caused by changes or “mutations” in genes. However these genes have not yet been identified.
Autism disorder is a developmental disorder that effects a person’s ability to Communicate, form relationships with others, and respond appropriately to the
environment. Some people with autism are functioning, with speech and intelligence intact. Others may be nonverbal and/or mentally retarded. Autism is on the rise from labeling not epidemic. 1-150 children are diagnosed that one child every 20 minutes.
Several studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of various stimuli to teach children with autism how to communicate. These studies have included a variety of stimuli ranging from audio, visual with words, visual with pictures, social; nonverbal, verbal, home based treatments, and others.
In 1998, a project evaluation was published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (Ozonoff & Cathcart). This report evaluated the fectiveness of a home based program intervention called TEACCH. The findings in this report suggested that children with autism improve significantly more when participating in a home based intervention program than do children who do not. Another article published in that same journal (Dawson, Meltzoff, Osterling, Rinaldi, and Brown, 1998) suggests that autistic children may not respond to social stimuli because they have a greater difficulty with shared attention. In this study three groups of children were studied. Autistic children where compared with children with Down syndrome and typical development. Children with autism performed significantly more errors on orienting tasks, both social and nonsocial, and shared attention tasks.
In 2006, a Randomized Comparison of the Effect of Two Prelinguistic Communication Interventions on the Acquisition of Spoken Communication in Preschoolers with ASD, (Yoder, Paul; Stone, Wendy L. Source: Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing. Purpose: This randomized group experiment compared the efficacy of 2 communication Interventions (Responsive, Education and Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (RPMT) and the picture exchange Communication System (PECS) on Spoken Communication of 35 preschoolers with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) The findings in this report suggested that PECS was more successful than PRMT in increasing the number of different no imitative words used at the post treatment period. Another article published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol.30. No.6. 2000: Teaching Conversational Skills to Children with Autism: Effect on the Development of the Theory of Mind: The research examined whether children with Autism could be trained to improve their conversational skills and whether this led to changes in standard tests of theory of mind.
(ToM). Three high functioning Children with autism participated in a multiple baseline across participants design. The children were taught how to initiate a conversation, take turns during conversation, listen attentively, maintain a conversation topic, and change a conversation topic appropriately. The children were tested for ToM using false belief tasks before and after training sessions. Results indicate that the amount of shared interest exhibited by the children with autism during conversation with their caregivers increased during training sessions. The children also made more responses that were appropriate to the context of the conversations. Performance on the False Belief tasks remained constant throughout the study.
Over the years many explanations have been proposed and many hypotheses have been tested. Some studies have focused on causes while others have focused on treatment. While there is no known cure for autism there are many treatment methods that can be used to help autistic children function with their disability. In this study, we sought to examine several existing studies on children with autism to see if there was any consistency within one form of treatment that would improve the communication skills of children with autism. The primary hypothesis was that there is one universal stimulus that can be used to improve communication skills in children with autism. Our null hypothesis is that there is no universal stimulus that can be used to improve communication skills in children with autism.
Method
Participants
Participants for this report ranged in age of 0-10 years. The children were diagnosed with varying degrees of autism. Studies compiled for this study included a total of 173 children. The individual studies used in this report compared children of similar ethnic, social, and economical backgrounds. Although the gender breakdown was provided in most of the studies, it was not a significant factor in the results and therefore not used as a variable in this report.
Procedure
Data was collected from six studies done from 1993 to 2006. The studies used in this report were conducted using cluster analysis of children with similar demographics. Each study was a case study, not selected randomly. The majority of the studies were conducted by observations and interviews and videotaped
Results from these studies were compiled into a data based and analyzed based on the percentage of success of treatment. ‘Treatment’ was broken into four different stimulus categories; audio, visual with pictures, visual with words, and social.
Treatments are defined as follows:
Audio treatments engaged students in making conversation, listening, maintaining a conversation, and appropriately changing a topic. Participants were tested at home or a quiet place. Subjects were observed by independent raters who measured frequency of eye contact and turns during a conversation.
Visual with word treatments included studies that evaluated responses to simple words and phrases. Visual with pictures treatments included studies that evaluated responses to picture prompts.
Social treatments included social interactions with familiar evaluators and non-familiar evaluators, verbal and nonverbal. Home based programs were included in this definition of treatment as well.
Coding and scoring of success of treatment
Treatments were coded as 1) audio, 2) visual with words, 3) visual with pictures, 4) social. Success rates of the treatments were determined using the scores of the individuals in each study. Success rates were calculated by taking the pre-test and post-test data.
Results
Differences in stimuli was calculated by taking pre-test results and the post-test results and calculating the percent increase in correct answers. The calculated percent of increase for the participants in the audio treatment method was 40%. This was the lowest percent of increase of the four treatments analyzed for this study. This result was closely followed by visual with words at 43%. Social stimulus was 45% successful. The highest percent of increase was observed for the visual with pictures at 97%.
Normally in a Meta Analysis study a coefficient would be calculated by taking the coefficients of all studies. Because many of these studies compared other variables a coefficient could not? be calculated. Because we could not effectively input data into an SPSS file a standard deviation could not be correctly calculated. The stimulus of visual with pictures proved 97% effective. Since this success rate is significantly greater than the other three stimuli, our hypothesis of ‘one universal stimulus that can be used to improve communication skills in children with autism’.
Discussion
Our objective was to assess whether there was an effective method to help autistic children to improve their language skills. We examined the commonly used methods and on the base of literature review, we concluded four mainly adopted methods: script stimuli, picture stimuli, audio stimuli and social stimuli.
The results firstly show that visual stimuli have the most positive influence on autistic children. The autistic children, through training, did improve on their conversational ability. Specifically, the percentage of time the children spent in shared interest and the percentage of utterances that were contextually appropriate increased. Hence, the participants showed an improvement in the ability to maintain a conversation topic. In particular, the amount of “answer” utterances generally increased after training occurred.
The results confirm previous findings that high functioning children with autism are proficient at giving a direct answer to a direct question (Tager-Flusberg & Anderson, 1991). The most prevalent response to a question was a one-word, one-phrase, or one-sentence answer. The results suggest that the extent to which children with autism can improve on the type of utterances made, and therefore, their conversational competence after training, depends on the quality of their speech at baseline level. Our findings also suggest that a child’s quality of speech may develop from predominantly preservative responses to mainly answer responses and then to increased elaborate responses. Results of the study also show that children with autism exhibit a general impairment in orienting ability, and that this impairment is more severe for social stimuli. Children with autism often failed to orient to social stimuli. In addition, children with autism who did orient to the social stimuli were more likely to show a delayed response. Such results suggest that children with autism are particularly impaired in their ability to orient to social stimuli. Unless children with autism are taught that social stimuli are interesting, rewarding, and meaningful, they may not be as likely to acquire more complex communicative or social skills that require paying attention to others.
There are two phenomena that we may pay attention to. In our study, we found that previous researches that conducted by parents at home were more effective by those by researchers that autistic children were not familiar with. Also, instruments with fading out help were more effective. Parents first trained the autistic children and during the second part of study, they left the room and observed autistic children’s behavior. These findings suggest that children with autism may feel more comfortable with familiar people and environment, and they need sufficient time and preparation before they can fully participate in the study.
In summary, it would be erroneous to conclude that autistic children cannot improve their language skills. Our researches show that there are potential instruments for improving the language ability of children with autism. Our hypothesis that there is one effective method to improve autistic children's language skills is confirmed in the limited number of studies we examined. Our study suggests that autistic children have the highest reaction toward audio stimuli, and the lowest toward social stimuli.
Bibliography
Dawson, G., Meltzoff, A., Osterling,J., Rinaldi, J., & Brown, E. (1998) Children with Autism Fail to Orient to Naturally Occurring Social Stimuli, Journal of Autism and Development Disorders, Vol.28, No.6, 479-485
Hsiao, Y. & Bernard-Opitz, V. (2000) Teaching Conversational Skills to Children with Autism: Effect on the Development of a Theory of Mind, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol.30, No.6, 569-583
Krantz P. & McClannahan, L. (1993) Teaching Children with Autism to Initiate to Peers: Effects of a Script-fading procedure, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Vol.26, 121-132
MacDuff, G., Krantz, P. & McClannahan, L. (1993) Teaching Children with Autism to Use Photographic Activity Schedules: Maintenance and Generalization of Complex Response Chains, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Vol. 26, 89-97
Ozonoff, S.,& Cathcart, K. (1998) Effectiveness of a Home Program Intervention for Young Children with Autism, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol.28, No.1,25-32
Pierce, K. & Schreibman (1994), Teaching Daily Living Skills to Children with Autism in Unsupervised Settings through Pictorial Self-management, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Vol. 27, 471-481
Veronica, S. & Anat, P. (2007) Predictors of Expressive Vocabulary Growth in Children with Autism, Journal of Speech, No.1, 149-160
Yoder, P. & Stone, W. (2006) A Randomized Comparison of the Effect of Two Prelinguistic Communication Interventions on the Acquisition of Spoken Communication in Preschoolers With ASD, Journal of Speech, No.4, 698-711
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
My 55 fiction
His hands began to sweat. The forest looked peaceful in the sunshine and she was enjoying the fall colors. She didn’t notice his anxiety.
“Sweetie”, he stopped and looked into her eyes, trying to reach the engagement ring in his pocket. “Nooooo!!!” She frowned.
His heart sank. Slowly, he turned around.
That’s why! A skunk!
This happened to my father-in-law when he proposed to his wife. Now they are still keeping a skunk toy at their house to memorize this event. As I was writing this story, I found it hard to keep the length exactly at 55 words. I had to cut some details so the story could move on within limit. I did consider putting the end of story at the beginning, but it’s even hard for me. It’s very fun to write this story and, even though I “struggled” during the work, I felt happy when it’s done.
What is "55 fiction"?
“Sweetie”, he stopped and looked into her eyes, trying to reach the engagement ring in his pocket. “Nooooo!!!” She frowned.
His heart sank. Slowly, he turned around.
That’s why! A skunk!
This happened to my father-in-law when he proposed to his wife. Now they are still keeping a skunk toy at their house to memorize this event. As I was writing this story, I found it hard to keep the length exactly at 55 words. I had to cut some details so the story could move on within limit. I did consider putting the end of story at the beginning, but it’s even hard for me. It’s very fun to write this story and, even though I “struggled” during the work, I felt happy when it’s done.
What is "55 fiction"?
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
technology integration - Chinese online teaching project
My final project is to design a website with several lesson units of Chinese language and culture. The website aims at students of beginning level with no Chinese background. So far it’s still at the early stage, and there have no registered students yet. I will keep working on it and hopefully in the near future I will be able to observe students learning Chinese with online technology.
To examine my final project, I invited two graduate students to view my websites. One has never contacted Chinese language and culture, but she has learned certain online technology, such as Google Earth, Wikispaces, Skype, etc. The other has learned Chinese in China for two years, but he doesn’t know anything about Web 2.0 and its products. After trying my online courses and technology, they told me their problems and suggestion.
My online class is composed of two parts: Chinese language and culture. It can be either a pure online Chinese learning resource for students who want to study at home; or a supplementary learning tool aside from Chinese class at school. Students can choose both sections or take one at a time. According to the foreign language standards of Michigan, students are supposed to use the language to communicate and express, and obtain the cultural knowledge of the nation.
Therefore, content on the website is both instructional and inspiring. For language section, I designed three modules: pronunciation, characters and dialogue. I recorded Chinese initials, finals and four tones, and put the pronunciation regulations as well as related pronunciation practice. Besides, I showed the stroke orders, and radical parts of Chinese characters. In the end, I put one dialogue with the function of inquiring and suggestion.
For language section, I chose five topics that students may have interests in: Chinese festivals, Chinese clothing, Chinese Religion, Chinese land and cities and Chinese wedding. Each topic is one module. The main technology includes videos, slideshows and Google Earth pictures. Students will start the module by going though the materials that I have prepared for them, then they will have group discussion, online researching, or make digital stories as their presentation. Students are supposed to learn the Chinese culture, explore for more information by themselves (individually or group work), share their finding online, and think over the uniqueness of the culture (What has cause it? What’s the main difference? What changes have taken place and why? What are the constraints and affordances?)
I used Wikispaces as the platform for my online Chinese education. For the teaching materials, I used the following applications: audio, video, slideshow, Google Earth, Skype, Del.icio.us. I used Google Calendar as the class calendar where I can put the syllabus and online meeting reminders. Google Docs is where students can check the homework they have finished, as well as share the work they have done.
After students register online, I will have a short survey about students’ knowledge background and motivation. Then I will organize the size and number of classes. Generally speaking, I will put similar knowledge background students in one class. On my online classes, I have prepared both visual and auditory learning materials for different students of different preferences. Students first need a short period of time to learn to use the applications that will be used in their online Chinese classes. After that, the class will begin. Students may check the Google Calendar for the class schedule and the due time for homework. They will have their own blog account and post their homework, including text paper, digital story, co-edited report. I will add their blogs into my Google Reader, so I can read their posts at the first time and give them immediate response. Usually every weekend there will be an online meeting via Skype. Students can ask questions, practice speaking Chinese with the teacher.
All these technologies enable the online class keep moving on. Student can enjoy their study progress in a convenient, interesting yet educative environment. The technology integration also offers students with many ways of learning. They can meet teachers online regularly; they can launch group activities with their study buddies via co-editing applications; they can arrange their schedule and take classes at their own pace, etc. The graduate student who helped to check my website was amazed by the concept of teaching and learning a language on Internet, also he was fascinated by the applications used for education. His favorite two applications were Google Earth, where he found many tourist stops he once been to; the other was videos (YouTube and Slide.com), which made online learning environment more vivid.
However, before he could enjoy the lessons, he had a hard time struggling with the web 2.0 applications. He had to install some software (Google Earth), and spent a long time to get familiar with it. People can’t totally appreciate the advantages of technology until they know how to use it. I assume these online teaching applications, in spite of their affordances, may impede study progress to some people.
There are group learning activities in each module. Students will share their ideas with their online classmates, and finish online researching work together. Sometimes they are required to co-produce a report, while sometimes they will check for their study buddy’s work. In short, as I design exercise and learning activities for students, I tried to create a social environment of constructivism. In the online teaching part, I will lead students to think and compare, and then take away my scaffolding, so students will explore on their own. Behaviorism will be seen in pronunciation practice. I linked a great amount of online pronunciation exercises on my website.
Technology plays an important role in my online Chinese classes. First of all, most of the teaching activities happen via Web 2.0. Besides, by using the online applications (e.g. Del.icio.us, videos), students can improve their metacognition and memory. Also, some applications help me to know better about students’ understanding (e.g. students will make digital story with narration on some cultural topics). Last, different types of applications fit students’ different preference (e.g. some are more visual).
To examine my final project, I invited two graduate students to view my websites. One has never contacted Chinese language and culture, but she has learned certain online technology, such as Google Earth, Wikispaces, Skype, etc. The other has learned Chinese in China for two years, but he doesn’t know anything about Web 2.0 and its products. After trying my online courses and technology, they told me their problems and suggestion.
My online class is composed of two parts: Chinese language and culture. It can be either a pure online Chinese learning resource for students who want to study at home; or a supplementary learning tool aside from Chinese class at school. Students can choose both sections or take one at a time. According to the foreign language standards of Michigan, students are supposed to use the language to communicate and express, and obtain the cultural knowledge of the nation.
Therefore, content on the website is both instructional and inspiring. For language section, I designed three modules: pronunciation, characters and dialogue. I recorded Chinese initials, finals and four tones, and put the pronunciation regulations as well as related pronunciation practice. Besides, I showed the stroke orders, and radical parts of Chinese characters. In the end, I put one dialogue with the function of inquiring and suggestion.
For language section, I chose five topics that students may have interests in: Chinese festivals, Chinese clothing, Chinese Religion, Chinese land and cities and Chinese wedding. Each topic is one module. The main technology includes videos, slideshows and Google Earth pictures. Students will start the module by going though the materials that I have prepared for them, then they will have group discussion, online researching, or make digital stories as their presentation. Students are supposed to learn the Chinese culture, explore for more information by themselves (individually or group work), share their finding online, and think over the uniqueness of the culture (What has cause it? What’s the main difference? What changes have taken place and why? What are the constraints and affordances?)
I used Wikispaces as the platform for my online Chinese education. For the teaching materials, I used the following applications: audio, video, slideshow, Google Earth, Skype, Del.icio.us. I used Google Calendar as the class calendar where I can put the syllabus and online meeting reminders. Google Docs is where students can check the homework they have finished, as well as share the work they have done.
After students register online, I will have a short survey about students’ knowledge background and motivation. Then I will organize the size and number of classes. Generally speaking, I will put similar knowledge background students in one class. On my online classes, I have prepared both visual and auditory learning materials for different students of different preferences. Students first need a short period of time to learn to use the applications that will be used in their online Chinese classes. After that, the class will begin. Students may check the Google Calendar for the class schedule and the due time for homework. They will have their own blog account and post their homework, including text paper, digital story, co-edited report. I will add their blogs into my Google Reader, so I can read their posts at the first time and give them immediate response. Usually every weekend there will be an online meeting via Skype. Students can ask questions, practice speaking Chinese with the teacher.
All these technologies enable the online class keep moving on. Student can enjoy their study progress in a convenient, interesting yet educative environment. The technology integration also offers students with many ways of learning. They can meet teachers online regularly; they can launch group activities with their study buddies via co-editing applications; they can arrange their schedule and take classes at their own pace, etc. The graduate student who helped to check my website was amazed by the concept of teaching and learning a language on Internet, also he was fascinated by the applications used for education. His favorite two applications were Google Earth, where he found many tourist stops he once been to; the other was videos (YouTube and Slide.com), which made online learning environment more vivid.
However, before he could enjoy the lessons, he had a hard time struggling with the web 2.0 applications. He had to install some software (Google Earth), and spent a long time to get familiar with it. People can’t totally appreciate the advantages of technology until they know how to use it. I assume these online teaching applications, in spite of their affordances, may impede study progress to some people.
There are group learning activities in each module. Students will share their ideas with their online classmates, and finish online researching work together. Sometimes they are required to co-produce a report, while sometimes they will check for their study buddy’s work. In short, as I design exercise and learning activities for students, I tried to create a social environment of constructivism. In the online teaching part, I will lead students to think and compare, and then take away my scaffolding, so students will explore on their own. Behaviorism will be seen in pronunciation practice. I linked a great amount of online pronunciation exercises on my website.
Technology plays an important role in my online Chinese classes. First of all, most of the teaching activities happen via Web 2.0. Besides, by using the online applications (e.g. Del.icio.us, videos), students can improve their metacognition and memory. Also, some applications help me to know better about students’ understanding (e.g. students will make digital story with narration on some cultural topics). Last, different types of applications fit students’ different preference (e.g. some are more visual).
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
collaborative tools
Last Tuesday we learned collaborative editing tool – NoteMesh and Yugma. NoteMesh is a free service that allows students in the same classes to share notes with each other. First of all the teacher needs to create an online class, then invite students to join in. The users, including teachers and students, can post and edit the text files together for free. Teachers can use this tool to publish resources online and ask students to read and write on it. Or, it can be used as a group researching tool that each student can update the latest progress of the work. This is especially useful for college students who take different courses and may not be able to meet their group members frequently. The constraint is there is no trace for each editor, and there is no way to save the edition history. If someone messes up with the work, there seems to be no way to “undo” it.
Yugma is a free web collaboration service that enables people to instantly connect over the internet to communicate and share content and ideas. I think this tool is especially useful for hosting study groups or tutoring sessions, for hosting virtual conference or other social events. Anyone in the group can make marks on the images or sent messages to the rest of members. This function can save people’s time because group members can post questions instantly and get instant replies, and they don’t even have to go out of their home or office! I can see this being used for class activities like debate, and I would like to try that on my students.
Yugma is a free web collaboration service that enables people to instantly connect over the internet to communicate and share content and ideas. I think this tool is especially useful for hosting study groups or tutoring sessions, for hosting virtual conference or other social events. Anyone in the group can make marks on the images or sent messages to the rest of members. This function can save people’s time because group members can post questions instantly and get instant replies, and they don’t even have to go out of their home or office! I can see this being used for class activities like debate, and I would like to try that on my students.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
copyright, pictures and mashing
Last Tuesday I learned a lot about websites and software that I can get for free on internet. It’s a very exciting learning experience. At the very beginning of the class, Fei brought up one notion “copy right”. I think that’s very important and necessary to put that part in beginning of the class – we have known there are many free resources that we can easily get online, and we have been using these resources for professional use or personal use. But as Fei and other classmates mentioned, most of us didn’t know some resources are “some right reserved”. After learning Creative Commons, I think I should redefine “online resources” – you may easily find a lot of information and get what you want, but before you “copy and paste”, think about “if I am allowed to do that”. I think this is not just a rule for internet users, it’s also a courtesy to internet contributors – only when the certain rules are set and carried out could we can use and share the internet resources in a better way. Otherwise, the free resources will become a big mess for lack of protection.
Since I have learned Creative Commons Research and FlickrCC, I have been using these tools for searching pictures for my researching work. I am really happy to know how to get pictures without violating contributors. I think in the future I will definitely teach my students about copyright rules before I tell them to search information online. It may take a while especially for young kids, but it is an important rule for everyone to know.
I also enjoyed using Google Map and Google Earth. In the past, I only used Google Earth for fun – to find some tourist spots. But the class on last Tuesday opened a new way to use Google Earth and Google Map. The GoogleLitTrip is very inspiring. I think I can try to put some history stories with pictures on Google Map and Google Earth. It will be more vivid for students to remember what happened.
Since I have learned Creative Commons Research and FlickrCC, I have been using these tools for searching pictures for my researching work. I am really happy to know how to get pictures without violating contributors. I think in the future I will definitely teach my students about copyright rules before I tell them to search information online. It may take a while especially for young kids, but it is an important rule for everyone to know.
I also enjoyed using Google Map and Google Earth. In the past, I only used Google Earth for fun – to find some tourist spots. But the class on last Tuesday opened a new way to use Google Earth and Google Map. The GoogleLitTrip is very inspiring. I think I can try to put some history stories with pictures on Google Map and Google Earth. It will be more vivid for students to remember what happened.
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