El uso del iPad con el programa AUGIE, ¿mejora la comunicación en personas con autismo?

La hipótesis básica de esta investigación es valorar si el programa AUGIE es una herramienta tecnológica que ayuda a las personas con autismo a comunicarse y a implementar aprendizajes. Partiendo de la base de que, en el trastorno del espectro del autismo (TEA), existen cuatro aspectos básicos característicos: las deficiencias en comunicación, socialización e imaginación, y los patrones de actividad e intereses restringidos y repetitivos, este trabajo se ha centrado fundamentalmente en una de las áreas afectadas: la comunicación. Todas las personas con TEA muestran alteraciones en la comunicación y en el lenguaje de forma muy heterogénea: desde la persona con mutismo pasando por la ecolálica, que repite frases sin cesar, hasta los que tienen lenguaje verbal pero carecen de habilidades a nivel pragmático. Dada la importancia del desarrollo comunicativo como mecanismo de control del entorno, de autodeterminación y de relación social, este trabajo pretende demostrar cómo la intervención de las nuevas tecnologías, en este caso del iPad a través de un programa específico como el AUGIE, maximiza las posibilidades comunicativas por encima de métodos clásicos, como sistema de comunicación por intercambio de imágenes (Picture Exchange Communication System PECS). Tras realizar una búsqueda bibliográfica, en primer lugar, se describen las hipótesis explicativas de las causas del autismo desde diferentes perspectivas como el psicoanálisis, conductismo y el cognitivismo pasando por las explicaciones biológicas o la hiper o hiposensibilidad a diferentes estímulos. A continuación, se explican las características del trastorno y se hace un especial énfasis en el aspecto comunicativo como se ha explicado anteriormente. Seguidamente, se abordan las necesidades educativas de las personas con TEA desde las necesidades de interacción social y de comunicación. Posteriormente, se explica cómo las tecnologías de la información y de la comunicación (TIC) constituyen un área de rápido desarrollo e implementación en el ámbito educativo. Las TIC son un medio tecnológico de intervención educativa para las personas con discapacidad y, en concreto, para las personas con TEA. Son un potente recurso para varios ámbitos de su vida: educación, comunicación, ocio y tiempo libre. Un objetivo de las TIC es proporcionar un modelo de comunicación válido a una persona que no es capaz de verbalizar. Una de las principales ventajas de las TIC es que se erigen como un poderoso aliado a la hora de potenciar y mejorar la comunicación de las personas con TEA. Dentro de las TIC, destaca el uso del iPad ya que proporciona inmediatez, movilidad y autonomía; proporciona una enseñanza individualizada. Los objetivos específicos de este trabajo son: 1. Comprobar que, si se usa el iPad con el AUGIE, se facilita que las personas con TEA realicen intercambios comunicativos, peticiones y transmitan necesidades. 2. Valorar que, si se utiliza el iPad con el AUGIE, se facilitan aprendizajes a través de la secuenciación visual mediante imágenes de pasos para lograr ejecutar una tarea (Método TEACCH, Treatment and Education of Autistic related Communication Handicapped Children) como, por ejemplo, poner la mesa, vestirse, ir al baño, etc. (autonomía personal), comprar en el supermercado siguiendo los pasos de la lista de la compra, desplazarse y tener una conducta adecuada en un lugar público como una cafetería (habilidades sociocomunitarias). 3. Verificar que, si se usa el iPad con el AUGIE, se puede favorecer el aprendizaje de los tiempos de espera. 4. Cotejar que, si se emplea el iPad con el AUGIE, se puede facilitar el juego y el entretenimiento (ocio) de las personas con TEA. A continuación se describen diferentes programas informáticos como el AZHAR, e-Mitnza, Sc@out, Picaa y el AUGIE, analizando las ventajas y las desventajas de cada uno de ellos. Durante los últimos años, el iPad se ha convertido en una tecnología popular para la educación de las personas con TEA. La popularidad del iPad en la educación de estudiantes con TEA puede relacionarse con su portabilidad (Shah, 2011; VanLaarhoven, Johnson, VanLaarhoven-Myles, Grider y Grider, 2009), el diseño de gran pantalla táctil (Shah, 2011), la facilidad en la individualización de la presentación de materiales educativos y una multitud de aplicaciones educativas (Kagohara, Sigafoos, Acmadi, Van der Meer, O´Reilly y Lancioni, 2011; Kagohara, Van der Meer, et al., 2013; Shah, 2011). Aunque los iPads son ampliamente utilizados, hay poca investigación para apoyar sus beneficios de aprendizaje (Kagohara, Sigafoos, et al., 2011; Kagohara et al., 2013). Se ha escogido el programa americano AUGIE para la investigación puesto que se trata de un programa muy completo y sólo se puede utilizar con el iPad. Este programa, AUGIE AAC Aumentative and Alternative Communication; (Comunicación Aumentativa y Alternativa), fue creado por Víctor Morris (2010) en Illinois (Estados Unidos). De la población de 80 usuarios que posee un Centro de Educación Especial de la Comunidad Valenciana, se ha seleccionado una muestra de forma incidental que consiste en seis personas con autismo de entre 18 y 30 años de edad, los cuales, se han dividido en dos grupos de tres sujetos. Un grupo (experimental) ha utilizado el iPad con el AUGIE y el otro grupo (convencional) ha utilizado un sistema de comunicación más tradicional con pictogramas utilizando el sistema PECS. Se ha creado una hoja de registro para la observación participante realizada. Esta hoja de registro es una plantilla en donde se registra a mano toda la información sobre cómo utilizan las personas con TEA el programa. Del mismo modo, se han registrado los avances comunicativos y las diferentes características asociadas al grupo de sujetos que no trabajan con el AUGIE y utilizan el sistema PECS. El programa se ha probado con las personas con autismo de manera individualizada en sala y con un ambiente estructurado. El tipo observación por parte del investigador principal ha sido de observación participante. En total se han realizado 12 sesiones de trabajo con cada sujeto (6 sujetos) dando a lugar 72 registros realizados de forma cualitativa. Así mismo, a cada sujeto se le ha aplicado un total de 28 variables relacionas con las peticiones, pasos a seguir realizando tareas, elecciones, juegos, etc. Los resultados muestran que el AUGIE en el iPad consigue mejorar la comunicación de las personas con TEA por encima del método tradicional PECS ya que, en la primera sesión, consiguen alcanzar una media de 13 habilidades siendo estadísticamente significativo dicho resultado y cumpliendo la hipótesis alternativa de que existe diferencia en la consecución de habilidades comunicativas entre ambos grupos (uso del iPad y uso de PECS). De esta forma, el programa AUGIE en formato iPad aparece como una herramienta muchísimo más ventajosa que los medios tradicionales como el PECS ya que los sujetos aprenden en menor tiempo a pedir de forma espontánea, piden más cantidad de cosas, solicitan más información, aprenden antes a rechazar cosas, piden acciones como, por ejemplo, descansar o beber agua, reduce estereotipias, centra la atención, favorece el desapego hacia objetos, no hay conductas disruptivas y les hace comprender antes y de forma más adecuada la espera y el paso del tiempo.

Incorporating an Ipad to Facilitate Letter Recognition and Enhance Academic Achievement

The Annual South Florida Education Research Conference is a presentation of scholarly work by students and faculty of member institutions and the community.

Intentional Use and Evaluation of iPad Applications in the Instruction of Pre-service Teachers

This study was undertaken to examine how instructor use of emerging technologies can contribute to better quality pre-service teacher education. A group of nine Memorial University Faculty of Education instructors attempted to systematically incorporate mobile tablet (iPad) technologies into their on-campus instruction over the period of one academic year (2013-2014). Participants familiarized themselves with their device; evaluated a range of instructional applications (apps) specific to their discipline and/or teaching focus areas; and attempted to intentionally integrate the device into the classroom-learning environment. The research team utilized several focus groups and semi-structured interviews to elicit the representations of participants with respect to their impressions of the value of tablet technologies and their experiences in implementing tablet technology in their instructional practice.

Parental mediation, YouTube’s networked public, and the baby-iPad encounter: mobilizing digital dexterity.

This study collected a sample of YouTube videos in which parents recorded their young children utilizing mobile touchscreen devices. Focusing on the more frequently viewed and highly-discussed videos, the paper analyzes the ways in which babies’ ‘digital dexterity’ is coded and understood in terms of contested notions of ‘naturalness’, and how the display of these capabilities is produced for a networked public. This reading of the ‘baby-iPad encounter’ helps expand existing scholarly concepts such as parental mediation and technology domestication. Recruiting several theoretical frameworks, the paper seeks to go beyond concerns of mobile devices and immobile children by analyzing children’s digital dexterity not just as a kind of mobility, but also as a set of reciprocal mobilizations that work across domestic, virtual and publically networked spaces.

Infants, interfaces, and intermediation: digital parenting and the production of 'iPad baby' videos on YouTube

We investigate the ways young children’s use of mobile touchscreen interfaces is both understood and shaped by parents through the production of YouTube videos and discussions in associated comment threads. This analysis expands on, and departs from, theories of parental mediation, which have traditionally been framed through a media effects approach in analyzing how parents regulate their children’s use of broadcast media, such as television, within family life. We move beyond the limitations of an effects framing through more culturally and materially oriented theoretical lenses of mediation, considering the role mobile interfaces now play in the lives of infants through analysis of the ways parents intermediate between domestic spaces and networked publics. We propose the concept of intermediation, which builds on insights from critical interface studies as well as cultural industries literature to help account for these expanded aspects of digital parenting. Here, parents are not simply moderating children’s media use within the home, but instead operating as an intermediary in contributing to online representations and discourses of children’s digital culture. This intermediary role of parents engages with ideological tensions in locating notions of “naturalness:” the iPad’s gestural interface or the child’s digital dexterity.

Of ivory towers and boundary spanners

We all live in a yellow submarine… When I go to work in the morning, in the office building that hosts our BPM research group, on the way up to our level I come by this big breakout room that hosts a number of computer scientists, working away at the next generation software algorithms and iPad applications (I assume). I have never actually been in that room, but every now and then the door is left ajar for a while and I can spot couches, lots (I mean, lots!) of monitors, the odd scientist, a number of Lara Croft posters, and the usual room equipment you’d probably expect from computer scientists (and, no, it’s not like that evil Dennis guy from the Jurassic Park movie, buried in chips, coke, and flickering code screens… It’s also not like the command room from the Nebuchadnezzar, Neo’s hovercraft in the Matrix movies, although I still strongly believe these green lines of code make a good screensaver).

The iPhone Moment, the Apple Brand and the creative consumer : From “hackability and usability” to cultural generativity

In this chapter I position the iPhone as a “moment” in the history of cultural technologies. Drawing predominantly on advertising materials and public conversations about other "moments" in the history of personal computing and focusing on Apple’s role in this history, I argue that the design philosophy, marketing, and business models behind the iPhone (and now the iPad) have decisively reframed the values of usability that underpin software and interface design in the consumer technology industry, marking a distinctive shift in the history and contested futures of digital culture.

A child led participatory approach for technology-based intervention

There is significant interest in Human-computer interaction methods that assist in the design of applications for use by children. Many of these approaches draw upon standard HCI methods,such as personas, scenarios, and probes. However, often these techniques require communication and kinds of thinking skills that are designer centred,which prevents children with Autism Spectrum Disorders or other learning and communication disabilities from being able to participate. This study investigates methods that might be used with children with ASD or other learning and communication disabilities to inspire the design of technology based intervention approaches to support their speech and language development. Similar to Iversen and Brodersen, we argue that children with ASD should not be treated as being in some way “cognitively incomplete”. Rather they are experts in their everyday lives and we cannot design future IT without involving them. However, how do we involve them Instead of beginning with HCI methods, we draw upon easy to use technologies and methods used in the therapy professions for child engagement, particularly utilizing the approaches of Hanen (2011) and Greenspan (1998). These approaches emphasize following the child’s lead and ensuring that the child always has a legitimate turn at a detailed level of interaction. In a pilot project, we have studied a child’s interactions with their parents about activities over which they have control – photos that they have taken at school on an iPad. The iPad was simple enough for this child with ASD to use and they enjoyed taking and reviewing photos. We use this small case study as an example of a child-led approach for a child with ASD. We examine interactions from this study in order to assess the possibilities and limitations of the child-led approach for supporting the design of technology based interventions to support speech and language development.

The effect of screen size on mission commander's situation awareness

Situation awareness lost is a common factor leading to human error in the aviation industry. However, few studies have investigated the effect on situation awareness where the control interface is a touch-screen device that supports simultaneous multi-touch input and information output. This research aims to conduct an experiment to evaluate the difference in situation awareness on a large screen device, DiamondTouch (DT107), and a small screen device, iPad, both with multi-touch interactive functions. The Interface Operation and Situation Awareness Testing Simulator (IOSATS), is a simulator to test the three basis interface operations (Search Target, Information Reading, and Change Detection) by implementing a simplified search and rescue scenario. The result of this experiment will provide reliable data for future research for improving operator's situation awareness in the avionic domain.

A walk through Reykjavik

A 1,000-word travel article about Iceland

The value of books : the fantastic flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and the social hieroglyphic of reading

The late eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of new technologies of subjectivity and of the literary. Most obviously, “the novel as a literary form appeared to embody and turn into an object the experience of life itself” (Park), and the novel genre came to both reflect and shape notions of interiority and subjectivity. In this same period, “A shift was taking place in the way people felt and thought about children and the accoutrements of childhood, including books and toys, were implicated in this change” (Lewis). In seeking to understand the relationships between media (e.g. books and toys), genres (e.g. novels and picture books), and modes of subjectivity, Marx’s influential theory of commodity fetishism, whereby “a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things”, has served as a productive tool of analysis. The extent to which Marx’s account of commodity fetishism continues to be of use becomes clear when the corollaries between the late eighteenth-century emergence of novels and pictures books as technologies of subjectivity and the early twenty-first century emergence of e-readers and digital texts as technologies of subjectivity are considered. This paper considers the literary technology of Apple’s iPad (first launched in 2010) as a commodity fetish, and the circulation of “apps” as texts made available by and offered as justifications for, this fetish object. The iPad is both book and toy, but is never “only” either; it is arguably a new technology of subjectivity which incorporates but also destabilises categories of reading and playing such as those made familiar by earlier technologies of literature and the self. The particular focus of this paper is on the multimodal versions (app, film, and picture book) of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which are understood here as a narrativisation of commodity fetishism, subjectivity, and the act of reading itself.