Integration of Digital Social Story Intervention into Differentiated Instruction Framework

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Min, Win Ko | Theng, Lau Bee^{; *}

Affiliations: Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Science, Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak, Malaysia

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Email: s.blau@swinburne.edu.my.

Abstract: Social communication impairment is pervasive among children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and participating in the respective community as a full-fledge member requires positive social behaviours. To help these children acquire acceptable social behaviours, social story approach as an eminent social skills intervention technique makes use of engaging and relevant social stories. Though reported effective, not all social stories created are equally effective for all children in addition to a significant amount of human intervention this approach requires and teacher/ caretaker’s difficulties in providing full-individualized attention. This study investigated how digital social stories intervention augmented with differentiated instructions could help overcome these drawbacks while supplementing the social communication needs of the children with ASD. The results of this study were positive and the proposed approach was effective in improving social behaviours of the children with ASD.

Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorders, differentiated instruction, differentiated digital social story intervention, social skills

DOI: 10.3233/jid-2017-0008

Journal: Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 41-56, 2017