Enhancing Spoken Vocabulary Performance in Children with Autism in a Multimedia-supported Context

Abstract

Adopting a cognitive perspective of information processing theory in multimedia learning, this study attempts to explore how much progress children with autism with limited speech make in their verbal vocabulary acquisition via a tailor-made multimedia software. These children’s speech difference than their typically developed counterparts is assumed an outcome of delayed development in the ability of retrieving appropriate information in their working memory from their long term memory instead of their receptive language capability. This is expected to help these students with the media acting as an external memory to fill the gap and prospective findings may assist professionals in such fields as education, cognitive psychology, information and communication technology, and neuropsychology as well in further investigation in these areas as contributing factors to autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and learning models for ASD students. With an ABA design of single-subject multiple-case with the design experiment approach, five children, whose parents are native Cantonese speakers, from 8 to 14 in their chronological age in a special school have been selected to participate in this investigation of 15-session 35 minutes each. Their performance in the four aspects of language, that is, phonological, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatics, will be examined. In order to obtain a relatively reliable and valid result, a pilot study on preliminary data in three different settings is being conducted. With similar or the same characteristics like those in main study, two kids each with language age of 4 to 5 in these settings, that is, a voluntary association catering for children with learning, another special school than the participating school, and the participating school.