Eija Kärnä

“I Amn Not a Utistivc on Thje Typ” (“I'm Not Autistic on the Typewriter”)

ABSTRACT Facilitated communication involves hand-over-hand or hand-on-forearm support of students as they communicate through pointing at pictures, letters or other objects. Over time, it is expected that the hand and arm support can be faded back. This observational study describes an effort to introduce facilitated communication to 22 students, ranging in age from 3 years 10 months to 21 years, in several US public schools. The students are all labeled autistic and do not speak or speak only with echolalic phrases. The findings include observations of the students communicating with facilitation, language samples, and conversations by the students. The students reveal unexpected literacy and numeracy skills. The appearance of these abilities raises a number of questions concerning prior assumptions about autism, communication, independence and interdependence, and the education of students with and without disabilities.

Designing technologies with children with special needs: Children in the Centre (CiC) framework

The Children in the Centre (CiC) framework, introduced in this paper, facilitates successful multidisciplinary research and design collaboration in computer science and special education with partners in non-academic contexts. The CiC framework emphasizes the active role of children and their families in the research and design processes. Practical tips for including children with special needs in the design and development of technologies are also described.

Review of Research on Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Use of Technology

This article presents the results of a review of research on children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and the use of technology. The review included 255 peer-reviewed research articles published between 2000 and 2010, archived in the ACM, IEEE, EBSCO, and ERIC databases. Content analysis was a method for analyzing articles. The results of the review indicated a clear growth in the number of research articles published during the last decade that addressed the issue of technologies for children with autism. Natural settings and field experiments were a typical methodology of the research, which reflected a strong link between academia and the field. On the other hand, the development of technologies took place separately from the user and children with ASD who participated in research activities in the latter stages of research and development. The results also indicated a strong research focus on the identification and provision of solutions to the problems typically related to ASD. Since the review only considered research focusing on problems related to ASD, future research should focus on the emergence of the capabilities and strengths of children with these disorders.

The Sally-Anne test: an interactional analysis of a dyadic assessment.

BACKGROUND The Sally-Anne test has been extensively used to examine childrens theory of mind understanding. Many task-related factors have been suggested to impact childrens performance on this test. Yet little is known about the interactional aspects of such dyadic assessment situations that might contribute to the ways in which children respond to the test questions. AIMS To examine the interactional factors contributing to the performance of two children in the Sally-Anne test. To identify the interactional practices used by the tester administering the task and to describe how interactional features can pose challenges in the critical belief and reality questions for both the tester and the testee. METHODS & PROCEDURES The Sally-Anne test was carried out as part of a project examining childrens interactions in a technology-enhanced environment. The present study uses video recordings of two children with communication disorders (one with a current diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder [ASD]) and an adult tester. We draw on a multimodal approach to conversation analysis (CA) to examine the sequential organization of the test questions and answers. OUTCOMES & RESULTS The children drew on diverse resources when producing responses to the test questions: responding verbally, pointing or manually handling objects. The tester treated these responses differently depending on how they were produced. When the child pointed at an object and verbally indicated their response, the tester moved on to the next question apparently accepting the childs answer. When the child manually handled an object or produced a quiet verbal response, the tester repeated the question indicating that the childs actions did not constitute an adequate response to a test question. In response to this, both children modified or changed their previous responses. Through monitoring each other, the tester and the child produced actions highly responsive to the features of each others conduct, which underpinned the conduct of the test itself. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS Childrens responses in the test might not be solely indicative of socio-cognitive capacities but also show orientation to interactional nuances. The study proposes that children can demonstrate diverse ways of responding to questions, yet testers may treat these as test-irrelevant behaviours if they do not correspond to the scoring criteria. A video-based CA study can broaden our understanding of childrens pragmatic competencies in responsiveness that may not always embody an expected form. This can have implications for the development of future assessment tasks and revision of existing scoring practices.

Autism spectrum disorder and impaired joint attention: A review of joint attention research from the past decade

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been found to have impaired joint attention (JA), which is considered key for learning social communication. This study reviewed the JA literature from the past decade to explore the generality of the deficit and looked at the JA assessment methods to see whether childrens interests and preferences that may impact the results had been taken into account. While this review found evidence of impaired JA, it also found evidence of intact JA skills at the individual and group levels, indicating a non-uniform impairment of JA. A largely homogeneous assessment methodology within the published research was discovered, and no study reported using childrens interests to create the assessment situation. The finding of JA skill variation between and within groups and individuals suggests that JA is within the scope of the learning capabilities of individuals with ASD. Due to the JA skill variation, we suggest that reporting individual data among group data to be an important aspect. We also propose that the uniform testing methods for JA might not be bringing to the surface all the capabilities held by individuals with ASD, and hence, individualized assessments based on preferences are suggested.

Supporting the Strengths and Activity of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders in a Technology-Enhanced Learning Environment

This paper introduces four principles for the establishment of a technology-enhanced learning environment with and for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and presents results on how the principles were actualized in relation to children’s actions in the environment. The study was conducted as action research premised on the children’s active roles as participants and developers, the empowerment of children’s strengths and creativity, and the modifiability and transformability of technology solutions. The learning environment consisted of four workstations: symbol matching, LEGO® building, storytelling, and Kinect playing. According to the results, the strength-based approach and versatile technology solutions engaged children with ASD as active participants and creative actors. This engagement is crucial for creating new possibilities for the children’s education and everyday lives.

The construction of communicative (in)competence in autism: : a focus on methodological decisions

Abstract Research on people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (henceforth autism) is often based upon biomedical understanding. Such understanding tends to view the characteristics related to autism diagnosis, such as the lack of or atypical use of speech, as a sign of incompetence that can be reduced as an underlying pathology of an individual. However, little research has explicitly investigated how methodological decisions in research might influence the perception of these characteristics. This paper draws on two separate research cases involving minimally verbal children with autism to examine how methodological decisions in research design, data collection, data analysis, and data interpretation influence the construction of communicative (in)competence in these children. The paper encourages researchers to carefully consider and reflect on the methodological decisions they make throughout the research process.

Students Acquiring Expertise through Student-Centered Learning in Mathematics Lessons

ABSTRACT This article reports the results of a study that investigated junior high school students’ experiences with learning in mathematics lessons that were based on self-guidance, use of technology, and minimalist instruction. The study was part of a ClassPad project and data were obtained from reports written by the 23 students after the ClassPad project ended. A model describing the student’s process of mastering doing and learning mathematics through acquiring expertise processes was constructed by using grounded theory method. The mastery of doing and/or learning was reached either with satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Two different learning profiles, one concluding with students feeling satisfied with their learning and the other concluding with students feeling unsatisfied, illustrated the students’ typical processes. The findings further revealed that when the teacher’s role was minimized and the students had the opportunity to self-guide their learning in an environment with various materials and easy-to-use technology, student-centered learning occurred.

Digi-Bags on the Go: Childminders’ Expectations and Experiences of a Tablet-Based Mobile Learning Environment in Family Day Care

The use of mobile technologies is playing an increasingly important role in early childhood education (ECE) settings. However, although technologies are often integrated in ECE provided in day care centres, technology use in other ECE settings, such as in family day care, is rare. In this paper, we describe the Digi-bag, a tablet-based mobile learning environment deployed at several family day care homes, and present the expectations and first experiences of family day care personnel regarding the pedagogical use of Digi-bags together with 1- to 5-year-old children as well as their experiences of training to use the digital technology. The results of the pilot study indicate that the deployment of Digi-bags facilitates the pedagogical, creative, and regular use of digital technology with small children. The study also underlines the importance of providing opportunities to family day care personnel for peer support and peer learning in natural settings besides professional training in the use of digital technologies.

Educators’ engagement with children with autism spectrum disorder in a learning environment with multiple technologies in Finland and China

ABSTRACT Technology-enhanced environments are increasingly used to enhance the interaction skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet little is known about how technology use influences interactions between educators and children. This article examined how educators engage with children with ASD in a technology-enhanced learning environment (LE). More precisely, the article investigated how educators verbally guide children with ASD during activities at four different technology-based workstations and how the children respond verbally and behaviorally to educators’ guidance. Seven children with ASD and their educators participated in this exploratory study. Data consisted of video recordings collected during interactional situations in technology-enhanced LEs with multiple technologies in Finland and China. The recordings were analyzed by developing a coding scheme in order to capture the educators’ verbal guidance and the children’s verbal and behavioral responses. The study showed that the educators engaged with children with ASD differently at different workstations, and the technology used shaped the educators’ verbal guidance and the children’s verbal and behavioral responses. These differences in educators’ verbal guidance and children’s responses between the workstations showed how the design and features of technology-enhanced solutions affected interactions around their use. Thus, by using versatile technologies, it was possible to shape the interaction between educators and children during educational activities and to provide children with ASD a variety of opportunities to practice communication and interaction skills.