- Email: [email protected]
Assisting students with autism to actively perform collaborative walking activity with their peers using dance pads combined with preferred environmental stimulation
Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders Journal homepage: http://ees.elsevier.com/RASD/default.asp
Assisting students with autism to actively perform collaborative walking activity with their peers using dance pads combined with preferred environmental stimulation Ching-Hsiang Shih a,*, Man-Ling Chang b, Shu-Hui Wang a, Chang-Lu Tseng a a b
Department of Special Education, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan, ROC Department of Special Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history: Received 20 August 2014 Accepted 25 August 2014 Available online 14 September 2014
The purpose of this study was to provide students with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) the opportunity to cooperate with their peers. This experiment was designed so that students with ASD and their partners were required to perform the collaborative walking activity using dance pads combined with preferred stimulation. With the foot-pressing position detection program (FPPDP) software, standard dance pads could be used as footpressing position detectors to detect participants’ collaborative walking activities. An ABAB design was adopted in this experiment, where A represented baseline phases, and B represented intervention phases. The experimental results show that the participants increased their willingness to perform the assigned task and the actual amount of collaborative walking activity also increased during the intervention phases compared to the baseline phases. Practical and developmental implications of the findings are discussed. ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: ASD FPPDP Dance pad Collaborative walking activity
1. Introduction One characteristic of children with ASD is that they have difficulty in social interaction and communication with others (Wing & Gould, 1979). They lack the ability to learn to build relationships with others and to form basic social responses. They may exhibit some behaviors, such as ignoring others altogether, avoiding making eye-contact, and failing to respond. Therefore, children with ASD often fail to master social skills, and struggle when it comes to cooperation within groups. In addition, it is difficult for them to experience other people’s emotions and feelings, and they often cannot express their own feelings using socially acceptable means. Many related studies have proposed that increasing the opportunity to interact with peers is beneficial for children with ASD in terms of improving their social interaction and communication. For example, peer-mediated strategies were used to improve the social functioning for children with ASD (DiSalvo & Oswald, 2002). Peer-mediated social skills training programs have been adopted to assist children with autism (Chung et al., 2007). Pivotal Response Training through peermediated practice has been used to improve social interactions for children with autism (Harper, Symon, & Frea, 2008).
* Corresponding author at: Department of Special Education, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien 970, Taiwan, ROC. Tel.: +886 3 8634881; fax: +886 3 8634870. E-mail address: [email protected] (C.-H. Shih). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2014.08.011 1750-9467/ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1592
C.-H. Shih et al. / Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
Fig. 1. The participant stepped on the dance pad, and a TV was connected to a control system to play his/her favorite video (Shih & Chiu, 2014).
Peer-mediated instruction and intervention strategies were used for children with ASD to acquire social skills (Sperry, Neitzel, & Engelhardt-Wells, 2010). Peer-mediated intervention was used for the improvement in social deficits in ASD (Corbett et al., 2014). Recently, a study has proposed the use of a dance pad combined with response-stimulation strategy to assist obese students with intellectual disabilities (ID) to actively perform walking activity (Shih & Chiu, 2014). Customized foot-pressing position detection program (FPPDP) software was developed to turn a standard dance pad into a foot-pressing detector to detect participants’ target responses; in that case, the participants continuously stepping on a dance pad within a period of time. As shown in Fig. 1, a control system was connected to a TV to play the participants’ favorite videos when walking activity was detected. The video playback would be interrupted if the participant stopped walking. Given the ability to trigger their preferred environmental stimulation, participants exhibited a positive attitude toward performing walking activity. The experimental result showed that participants increased the rate of their walking activity during the intervention phase compared to the baseline phase, and retained the effective performance in the maintenance phase. A dance pad, as shown in Fig. 2, is a flat electronic game controller used for application in dance games (DDRGame, 2014). Most dance pads are divided into nine square panels, and a switch sensor is embedded in each panel. When a player steps on a panel, the sensor can detect the player’s foot-pressing and transmits the signal to the control system for playing dance games. With the application of software technology, the default functions of the dance pad can be expanded. A commerical dance pad can be used as an assistive technology (AT) device in the form of a foot-pressing detector for application in the fields of speical education and rehabilitation (Shih & Chiu, 2014). This study continued the above mentioned study which involved using a dance pad combined with preferred environmental stimulation. Two dance pads were used in this study for the purpose of increasing the collaborative walking activity among students with ASD and their peers by having participant step on dance pads. Two students were partners and each stood on an individual dance pad. These two dance pads were connected to the same control system, an AIO computer (Lenovo, 2014) that was used to play their common preferred stimulation (i.e., a music video). The target response was that the two participants were required to engage in walking activity together in order to trigger the preferred stimulation. The control system would trigger the video playback whenever collaborative walking activity was detected. Conversely, the music video would be interrupted if one or both of the participants stopped walking, and the interrupted video would play again only when the control system detected new collaborative walking activity. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate whether students with ASD could actively perform collaborative walking activity with their peers through stepping on dance pads combined with preferred stimulation. It bears mentioning that in order to increase the motivation and willingness for participants to engage in collaborative walking activity, the choices of preferred stimulation are important. The preferred stimulation in the present experiment consisted of videos which were favorites of both participants and were recommended and provided by their parents and teachers.
C.-H. Shih et al. / Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
1593
Fig. 2. Most dance pads are divided into nine square panels, and each panel has its own switch sensor (DDRGame, 2014).
2. Methodology 2.1. Participants Four students who were separated into two groups participated in this study. Each group included one student with autism and one student with ID who were classmates. All participants were senior high school students who studied in the same special education school. Their background information is listed in Table 1. The research assistant explained the experimental purpose and procedures to the participants’ parents and obtained their consent before commencing the experiment. 2.2. Dance pad and control system As shown in Fig. 3, the configuration of this experiment included two dance pads and one all-in-one (AIO) computer (Lenovo, 2014) installed with the Windows Operating System that was used as a control system. Panels ‘‘’’ and ‘‘"’’ on the two dance pads were the assigned positions, designated as Pa and Pb. The FPPDP software (Shih & Chiu, 2014) was installed in the AIO computer for the purpose of detecting participants’ target responses. In this experiment, the target response was participants’ collaborative walking activity, which meant that both of them needed to continue walking in place on the Pa and Pb panels together. With the assistance of FPPDP software technology, a dance pad was used as a foot-pressing position detector in order to detect participants’ target responses. The sensor of each panel was able to detect the pressure on it and transmitted the signal to the control system. Once the control system received a correct target response, the preferred stimulation would be Table 1 Background information of the participants. Group A Participants Gender Age Type and level of disability Cognitive ability
Visual and auditory ability Capability of body movement
Favorite stimulation
Kao Male 16 Moderate ASD No speaking ability, but can understand simple instructions Normal-liked listening to music Body movement was normal, but fine motor should be strengthened Songs with strong rhythm and snacks
Group B Liang Male 16 Moderate ID Good speaking ability and good at listening, reading and writing Normal-liked listening to music Gross and fine motor were normal
Chen Male 17 Moderate ASD Poor speaking ability, but can understand simple instructions Normal-liked listening to music and watching video Body movement was normal, and fine motor was good
Huang Female 17 Moderate ID Good speaking ability and good at listening, reading and writing Normal-liked listening to music and watching video Gross and fine motor were normal, and liked ball games
Popular music
Cartoon movies and video games
Music videos
1594
C.-H. Shih et al. / Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
Fig. 3. Two participants stepped on their own dance pad, and in front of them was an AIO computer used as a control system to play their favorite video.
triggered by it, whereas the stimulation would be interrupted when one or both of the participants stopped walking, which meant that no collaborative walking activity was being performed. The control system produced the preferred environmental stimulation and automatically recorded the numbers of target responses. The experimental process was repeated until the end of the test time. 2.3. Experimental conditions One to three sessions were carried out per day for both groups during the period of this study, and each session lasted for 3 min. The reasons for setting the experimental session for 3 min included the fact that it was the first time for the participants to cooperate and take part in this kind of experiment, consideration of the participants’ attention spans, and 3 min constituting a short video playback time. The experiment took place in an activity room at the participants’ school; a place they were familiar with. In addition, this study adopted an ABAB design (Richards, Taylor, Ramasamy, & Richards, 1999), where A represented baseline phases and B represented intervention phases. The rate of collaborative walking activity within 3 min was automatically recorded by the control system. 2.3.1. Baseline phase Both groups underwent 3 sessions during the baseline phases I and II. In the baseline phases, two dance pads and an AIO computer were set up and ready, but the preferred stimulation was not activated. A research assistant would give vocal prompts to all participants to remind them to perform collaborative walking activity if the non-response was over 1 min. The participants’ baseline behaviors were observed and recorded. 2.3.2. Intervention phase Eleven sessions were carried out with both groups during the intervention phases I and II. In these phases, all experimental settings were the same as in the baseline phases, but the preferred stimulation was activated to investigate the effects of the intervention. A research assistant explained to participants how to trigger the preferred stimulation, which was controlled by their collaborative walking activity. The control system would play their favorite video as long as they continued performing collaborative walking activity successfully, whereas the video playback would be interrupted whenever cessation of collaborative walking activity was detected. 2.4. Results The experimental data of group A is shown in Fig. 4. Each data point on the graph represents the rate of collaborative walking activity within 3 min. The mean rate of collaborative walking for group A was 14.67 during baseline phase I. With preferred stimulation, the mean rate significantly increased to 151.82 during intervention phase I. However, the mean rate
C.-H. Shih et al. / Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
1595
Fig. 4. Experimental data of group A. Each data point on the graph represents the rate of collaborative walking activity within 3 min.
dropped to 40.00 in baseline phase II due to the absence of preferred stimulation, and the mean rate increased again to 170.46 in intervention phase II. The experimental data of group B is shown in Fig. 5. Each data point on the graph represents the rate of collaborative walking activity within 3 min. The mean rate of collaborative walking for group B was 16.00 during baseline phase I, and then dramatically increased to 157.36 during the intervention phase I. Similar to the situation with group A, without preferred stimulation, the mean rate for group B dropped to 23.33 during baseline phase II, and then increased again to 178.36 during intervention phase II. During the baseline phases, for group A, student Kao had no willingness to walk, and only walked one or two steps when he saw his partner walking. Most of the time, Kao just stood on the dance pad. Student Liang also felt bored and lost interest in performing walking activity after several steps. Kao and Liang performed collaborative walking activity a few times at the beginning of the experiment, but the duration of the collaborative walking time grew shorter and shorter toward the end of test time. For group B, student Chen was unable to keep walking on the dance pad, and even left the dance pad to go somewhere else, for example, approaching the computer to watch the timer counting down on the screen. Student Huang was able to follow the instruction to walk, but walked slowly, felt bored and kept asking when the test time would finish. Therefore, the rates of collaborative walking were not high for either group A or group B. During the intervention phases, students of group A were interested in the intervention of preferred stimulation. They were excited about the video and would make noise when the playback was interrupted. Both students understood that if they did not perform collaborative walking activity, the video playback would be interrupted. In order to continue watching the video, Liang would remind Kao to keep walking whenever he stopped, and Kao would follow Liang’s admonition and cooperate by continuing to walk. The chosen music video was a favorite of both of them, and therefore they had more willingness to perform the collaborative walking activity. For group B, both students were also interested in the intervention of preferred stimulation. They made concerted efforts to step the dance pad. When the video was Chen’s favorite, he was happy and laughed. Chen and Huang formed a good relationship after taking part in the experiment several times, and got used to performing the walking activity together. Huang would even invite Chen to go to take part in the experiment together, instead of going alone. The experimental results show that both groups had a low willingness to perform collaborative walking activity during the baseline phases, whereas, the rates of collaborative walking activity increased significantly during the intervention
Fig. 5. Experimental data of group B. Each data point on the graph represents the rate of collaborative walking activity within 3 min.
1596
C.-H. Shih et al. / Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
phases. The difference between the baseline and intervention phases was significant (p < 0.01) according to the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (Siegel & Castellan, 1988). 3. Discussion Individuals with ASD lack the ability to build relationships with others due to deficits in terms of interaction and communication with others. Increasing the opportunity to cooperate with others is beneficial for people with autism as it improves their social interaction. Students with ASD have many chances to cooperate with their peers at school, as long as there are suitable collaborative activities for them to participate in. This study was designed to investigate whether students with ASD could actively perform collaborative walking performance with their partners by using dance pads combined with their preferred stimulation. Two dance pads were used to increase the opportunity for cooperation. Through collaborative walking activity, students with ASD may have a chance to interact with their partners. The experimental results indicated that during the baseline phases, all the participants’ willingness to perform the collaborative walking activity was low. With the intervention of the participants’ preferred stimulation, however, both groups increased the rate of collaborative walking activity significantly during the intervention phases. This shows that using dance pads combined with preferred environmental stimulation was effective to increase the collaborative walking activity for the students with ASD and ID who participated in this experiment. However, there were only two groups of participants in this experiment, and the sample size was too small to generalize the experimental results to other students with ASD and ID. Besides, the experiment was carried out in an undisturbed space at the participants’ school. The experimental results may have been different if the experiment had taken place in another place where there may have been disturbance from the surroundings. Hence, the experimental result may not be generalized to other experimental contexts or settings. Expanding the numbers of participants to include individuals with different levels and types of disability could be considered in further studies. The experimental setting could be designed so that two or more participants are required to perform the walking activity alternately, as opposed to jointly, to trigger their preferred stimulation. In addition, this study only focused on the collaborative walking performance of students with ASD and their partners. Future researchers could devise scales by which to observe the interaction among students with ASD and their peers when they are taking part in similar experiments. Acknowledgement The authors would like to thank the National Science Council, Taiwan, R.O.C. for financially supporting this research under Contract No. NSC 101-2511-S-259-011-MY3. References Chung, K.-M., Reavis, S., Mosconi, M., Drewry, J., Matthews, T., & Tasse´, M. J. (2007). Peer-mediated social skills training program for young children with highfunctioning autism. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 28, 423–436. Corbett, B. A., Swain, D. M., Coke, C., Simon, D., Newsom, C., Houchins-Juarez, N., et al. (2014). Improvement in social deficits in autism spectrum disorders using a theatre-based, peer-mediated intervention. Autism Research, 7, 4–16. DDRGame (2014). DDR Regular Mats for PS/PS2/Wii/Xbox/PC. http://www.ddrgame.com/ddrmatpad.html DiSalvo, C. A., & Oswald, D. P. (2002). Peer-mediated interventions to increase the social interaction of children with autism consideration of peer expectancies. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 17, 198–207. Harper, C. B., Symon, J. B., & Frea, W. D. (2008). Recess is time-in: Using peers to improve social skills of children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38, 815–826. Lenovo (2014). Lenovo C560 Touch All-in-One. http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/essential/c-series/c560/ Richards, S. B., Taylor, R. L., Ramasamy, R., & Richards, R. Y. (1999). Single subject research: Applications in educational and clinical settings. New York: Wadsworth. Shih, C.-H., & Chiu, Y.-C. (2014). Assisting obese students with intellectual disabilities to actively perform the activity of walking in place using a dance pad to control their preferred environmental stimulation. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 35, 2394–2402. Siegel, S., & Castellan, N. J. (1988). Nonparametric statistics for the behavioral sciences. New York: McGraw-HiU Book Company. Sperry, L., Neitzel, J., & Engelhardt-Wells, K. (2010). Peer-mediated instruction and intervention strategies for students with autism spectrum disorders. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 54, 256–264. Wing, L., & Gould, J. (1979). Severe impairments of social interaction and associated abnormalities in children: Epidemiology and classification. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 9, 11–29.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders Journal homepage: http://ees.elsevier.com/RASD/default.asp
Assisting students with autism to actively perform collaborative walking activity with their peers using dance pads combined with preferred environmental stimulation Ching-Hsiang Shih a,*, Man-Ling Chang b, Shu-Hui Wang a, Chang-Lu Tseng a a b
Department of Special Education, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan, ROC Department of Special Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history: Received 20 August 2014 Accepted 25 August 2014 Available online 14 September 2014
The purpose of this study was to provide students with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) the opportunity to cooperate with their peers. This experiment was designed so that students with ASD and their partners were required to perform the collaborative walking activity using dance pads combined with preferred stimulation. With the foot-pressing position detection program (FPPDP) software, standard dance pads could be used as footpressing position detectors to detect participants’ collaborative walking activities. An ABAB design was adopted in this experiment, where A represented baseline phases, and B represented intervention phases. The experimental results show that the participants increased their willingness to perform the assigned task and the actual amount of collaborative walking activity also increased during the intervention phases compared to the baseline phases. Practical and developmental implications of the findings are discussed. ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: ASD FPPDP Dance pad Collaborative walking activity
1. Introduction One characteristic of children with ASD is that they have difficulty in social interaction and communication with others (Wing & Gould, 1979). They lack the ability to learn to build relationships with others and to form basic social responses. They may exhibit some behaviors, such as ignoring others altogether, avoiding making eye-contact, and failing to respond. Therefore, children with ASD often fail to master social skills, and struggle when it comes to cooperation within groups. In addition, it is difficult for them to experience other people’s emotions and feelings, and they often cannot express their own feelings using socially acceptable means. Many related studies have proposed that increasing the opportunity to interact with peers is beneficial for children with ASD in terms of improving their social interaction and communication. For example, peer-mediated strategies were used to improve the social functioning for children with ASD (DiSalvo & Oswald, 2002). Peer-mediated social skills training programs have been adopted to assist children with autism (Chung et al., 2007). Pivotal Response Training through peermediated practice has been used to improve social interactions for children with autism (Harper, Symon, & Frea, 2008).
* Corresponding author at: Department of Special Education, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien 970, Taiwan, ROC. Tel.: +886 3 8634881; fax: +886 3 8634870. E-mail address: [email protected] (C.-H. Shih). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2014.08.011 1750-9467/ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1592
C.-H. Shih et al. / Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
Fig. 1. The participant stepped on the dance pad, and a TV was connected to a control system to play his/her favorite video (Shih & Chiu, 2014).
Peer-mediated instruction and intervention strategies were used for children with ASD to acquire social skills (Sperry, Neitzel, & Engelhardt-Wells, 2010). Peer-mediated intervention was used for the improvement in social deficits in ASD (Corbett et al., 2014). Recently, a study has proposed the use of a dance pad combined with response-stimulation strategy to assist obese students with intellectual disabilities (ID) to actively perform walking activity (Shih & Chiu, 2014). Customized foot-pressing position detection program (FPPDP) software was developed to turn a standard dance pad into a foot-pressing detector to detect participants’ target responses; in that case, the participants continuously stepping on a dance pad within a period of time. As shown in Fig. 1, a control system was connected to a TV to play the participants’ favorite videos when walking activity was detected. The video playback would be interrupted if the participant stopped walking. Given the ability to trigger their preferred environmental stimulation, participants exhibited a positive attitude toward performing walking activity. The experimental result showed that participants increased the rate of their walking activity during the intervention phase compared to the baseline phase, and retained the effective performance in the maintenance phase. A dance pad, as shown in Fig. 2, is a flat electronic game controller used for application in dance games (DDRGame, 2014). Most dance pads are divided into nine square panels, and a switch sensor is embedded in each panel. When a player steps on a panel, the sensor can detect the player’s foot-pressing and transmits the signal to the control system for playing dance games. With the application of software technology, the default functions of the dance pad can be expanded. A commerical dance pad can be used as an assistive technology (AT) device in the form of a foot-pressing detector for application in the fields of speical education and rehabilitation (Shih & Chiu, 2014). This study continued the above mentioned study which involved using a dance pad combined with preferred environmental stimulation. Two dance pads were used in this study for the purpose of increasing the collaborative walking activity among students with ASD and their peers by having participant step on dance pads. Two students were partners and each stood on an individual dance pad. These two dance pads were connected to the same control system, an AIO computer (Lenovo, 2014) that was used to play their common preferred stimulation (i.e., a music video). The target response was that the two participants were required to engage in walking activity together in order to trigger the preferred stimulation. The control system would trigger the video playback whenever collaborative walking activity was detected. Conversely, the music video would be interrupted if one or both of the participants stopped walking, and the interrupted video would play again only when the control system detected new collaborative walking activity. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate whether students with ASD could actively perform collaborative walking activity with their peers through stepping on dance pads combined with preferred stimulation. It bears mentioning that in order to increase the motivation and willingness for participants to engage in collaborative walking activity, the choices of preferred stimulation are important. The preferred stimulation in the present experiment consisted of videos which were favorites of both participants and were recommended and provided by their parents and teachers.
C.-H. Shih et al. / Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
1593
Fig. 2. Most dance pads are divided into nine square panels, and each panel has its own switch sensor (DDRGame, 2014).
2. Methodology 2.1. Participants Four students who were separated into two groups participated in this study. Each group included one student with autism and one student with ID who were classmates. All participants were senior high school students who studied in the same special education school. Their background information is listed in Table 1. The research assistant explained the experimental purpose and procedures to the participants’ parents and obtained their consent before commencing the experiment. 2.2. Dance pad and control system As shown in Fig. 3, the configuration of this experiment included two dance pads and one all-in-one (AIO) computer (Lenovo, 2014) installed with the Windows Operating System that was used as a control system. Panels ‘‘’’ and ‘‘"’’ on the two dance pads were the assigned positions, designated as Pa and Pb. The FPPDP software (Shih & Chiu, 2014) was installed in the AIO computer for the purpose of detecting participants’ target responses. In this experiment, the target response was participants’ collaborative walking activity, which meant that both of them needed to continue walking in place on the Pa and Pb panels together. With the assistance of FPPDP software technology, a dance pad was used as a foot-pressing position detector in order to detect participants’ target responses. The sensor of each panel was able to detect the pressure on it and transmitted the signal to the control system. Once the control system received a correct target response, the preferred stimulation would be Table 1 Background information of the participants. Group A Participants Gender Age Type and level of disability Cognitive ability
Visual and auditory ability Capability of body movement
Favorite stimulation
Kao Male 16 Moderate ASD No speaking ability, but can understand simple instructions Normal-liked listening to music Body movement was normal, but fine motor should be strengthened Songs with strong rhythm and snacks
Group B Liang Male 16 Moderate ID Good speaking ability and good at listening, reading and writing Normal-liked listening to music Gross and fine motor were normal
Chen Male 17 Moderate ASD Poor speaking ability, but can understand simple instructions Normal-liked listening to music and watching video Body movement was normal, and fine motor was good
Huang Female 17 Moderate ID Good speaking ability and good at listening, reading and writing Normal-liked listening to music and watching video Gross and fine motor were normal, and liked ball games
Popular music
Cartoon movies and video games
Music videos
1594
C.-H. Shih et al. / Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
Fig. 3. Two participants stepped on their own dance pad, and in front of them was an AIO computer used as a control system to play their favorite video.
triggered by it, whereas the stimulation would be interrupted when one or both of the participants stopped walking, which meant that no collaborative walking activity was being performed. The control system produced the preferred environmental stimulation and automatically recorded the numbers of target responses. The experimental process was repeated until the end of the test time. 2.3. Experimental conditions One to three sessions were carried out per day for both groups during the period of this study, and each session lasted for 3 min. The reasons for setting the experimental session for 3 min included the fact that it was the first time for the participants to cooperate and take part in this kind of experiment, consideration of the participants’ attention spans, and 3 min constituting a short video playback time. The experiment took place in an activity room at the participants’ school; a place they were familiar with. In addition, this study adopted an ABAB design (Richards, Taylor, Ramasamy, & Richards, 1999), where A represented baseline phases and B represented intervention phases. The rate of collaborative walking activity within 3 min was automatically recorded by the control system. 2.3.1. Baseline phase Both groups underwent 3 sessions during the baseline phases I and II. In the baseline phases, two dance pads and an AIO computer were set up and ready, but the preferred stimulation was not activated. A research assistant would give vocal prompts to all participants to remind them to perform collaborative walking activity if the non-response was over 1 min. The participants’ baseline behaviors were observed and recorded. 2.3.2. Intervention phase Eleven sessions were carried out with both groups during the intervention phases I and II. In these phases, all experimental settings were the same as in the baseline phases, but the preferred stimulation was activated to investigate the effects of the intervention. A research assistant explained to participants how to trigger the preferred stimulation, which was controlled by their collaborative walking activity. The control system would play their favorite video as long as they continued performing collaborative walking activity successfully, whereas the video playback would be interrupted whenever cessation of collaborative walking activity was detected. 2.4. Results The experimental data of group A is shown in Fig. 4. Each data point on the graph represents the rate of collaborative walking activity within 3 min. The mean rate of collaborative walking for group A was 14.67 during baseline phase I. With preferred stimulation, the mean rate significantly increased to 151.82 during intervention phase I. However, the mean rate
C.-H. Shih et al. / Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
1595
Fig. 4. Experimental data of group A. Each data point on the graph represents the rate of collaborative walking activity within 3 min.
dropped to 40.00 in baseline phase II due to the absence of preferred stimulation, and the mean rate increased again to 170.46 in intervention phase II. The experimental data of group B is shown in Fig. 5. Each data point on the graph represents the rate of collaborative walking activity within 3 min. The mean rate of collaborative walking for group B was 16.00 during baseline phase I, and then dramatically increased to 157.36 during the intervention phase I. Similar to the situation with group A, without preferred stimulation, the mean rate for group B dropped to 23.33 during baseline phase II, and then increased again to 178.36 during intervention phase II. During the baseline phases, for group A, student Kao had no willingness to walk, and only walked one or two steps when he saw his partner walking. Most of the time, Kao just stood on the dance pad. Student Liang also felt bored and lost interest in performing walking activity after several steps. Kao and Liang performed collaborative walking activity a few times at the beginning of the experiment, but the duration of the collaborative walking time grew shorter and shorter toward the end of test time. For group B, student Chen was unable to keep walking on the dance pad, and even left the dance pad to go somewhere else, for example, approaching the computer to watch the timer counting down on the screen. Student Huang was able to follow the instruction to walk, but walked slowly, felt bored and kept asking when the test time would finish. Therefore, the rates of collaborative walking were not high for either group A or group B. During the intervention phases, students of group A were interested in the intervention of preferred stimulation. They were excited about the video and would make noise when the playback was interrupted. Both students understood that if they did not perform collaborative walking activity, the video playback would be interrupted. In order to continue watching the video, Liang would remind Kao to keep walking whenever he stopped, and Kao would follow Liang’s admonition and cooperate by continuing to walk. The chosen music video was a favorite of both of them, and therefore they had more willingness to perform the collaborative walking activity. For group B, both students were also interested in the intervention of preferred stimulation. They made concerted efforts to step the dance pad. When the video was Chen’s favorite, he was happy and laughed. Chen and Huang formed a good relationship after taking part in the experiment several times, and got used to performing the walking activity together. Huang would even invite Chen to go to take part in the experiment together, instead of going alone. The experimental results show that both groups had a low willingness to perform collaborative walking activity during the baseline phases, whereas, the rates of collaborative walking activity increased significantly during the intervention
Fig. 5. Experimental data of group B. Each data point on the graph represents the rate of collaborative walking activity within 3 min.
1596
C.-H. Shih et al. / Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 8 (2014) 1591–1596
phases. The difference between the baseline and intervention phases was significant (p < 0.01) according to the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (Siegel & Castellan, 1988). 3. Discussion Individuals with ASD lack the ability to build relationships with others due to deficits in terms of interaction and communication with others. Increasing the opportunity to cooperate with others is beneficial for people with autism as it improves their social interaction. Students with ASD have many chances to cooperate with their peers at school, as long as there are suitable collaborative activities for them to participate in. This study was designed to investigate whether students with ASD could actively perform collaborative walking performance with their partners by using dance pads combined with their preferred stimulation. Two dance pads were used to increase the opportunity for cooperation. Through collaborative walking activity, students with ASD may have a chance to interact with their partners. The experimental results indicated that during the baseline phases, all the participants’ willingness to perform the collaborative walking activity was low. With the intervention of the participants’ preferred stimulation, however, both groups increased the rate of collaborative walking activity significantly during the intervention phases. This shows that using dance pads combined with preferred environmental stimulation was effective to increase the collaborative walking activity for the students with ASD and ID who participated in this experiment. However, there were only two groups of participants in this experiment, and the sample size was too small to generalize the experimental results to other students with ASD and ID. Besides, the experiment was carried out in an undisturbed space at the participants’ school. The experimental results may have been different if the experiment had taken place in another place where there may have been disturbance from the surroundings. Hence, the experimental result may not be generalized to other experimental contexts or settings. Expanding the numbers of participants to include individuals with different levels and types of disability could be considered in further studies. The experimental setting could be designed so that two or more participants are required to perform the walking activity alternately, as opposed to jointly, to trigger their preferred stimulation. In addition, this study only focused on the collaborative walking performance of students with ASD and their partners. Future researchers could devise scales by which to observe the interaction among students with ASD and their peers when they are taking part in similar experiments. Acknowledgement The authors would like to thank the National Science Council, Taiwan, R.O.C. for financially supporting this research under Contract No. NSC 101-2511-S-259-011-MY3. References Chung, K.-M., Reavis, S., Mosconi, M., Drewry, J., Matthews, T., & Tasse´, M. J. (2007). Peer-mediated social skills training program for young children with highfunctioning autism. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 28, 423–436. Corbett, B. A., Swain, D. M., Coke, C., Simon, D., Newsom, C., Houchins-Juarez, N., et al. (2014). Improvement in social deficits in autism spectrum disorders using a theatre-based, peer-mediated intervention. Autism Research, 7, 4–16. DDRGame (2014). DDR Regular Mats for PS/PS2/Wii/Xbox/PC. http://www.ddrgame.com/ddrmatpad.html DiSalvo, C. A., & Oswald, D. P. (2002). Peer-mediated interventions to increase the social interaction of children with autism consideration of peer expectancies. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 17, 198–207. Harper, C. B., Symon, J. B., & Frea, W. D. (2008). Recess is time-in: Using peers to improve social skills of children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38, 815–826. Lenovo (2014). Lenovo C560 Touch All-in-One. http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/essential/c-series/c560/ Richards, S. B., Taylor, R. L., Ramasamy, R., & Richards, R. Y. (1999). Single subject research: Applications in educational and clinical settings. New York: Wadsworth. Shih, C.-H., & Chiu, Y.-C. (2014). Assisting obese students with intellectual disabilities to actively perform the activity of walking in place using a dance pad to control their preferred environmental stimulation. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 35, 2394–2402. Siegel, S., & Castellan, N. J. (1988). Nonparametric statistics for the behavioral sciences. New York: McGraw-HiU Book Company. Sperry, L., Neitzel, J., & Engelhardt-Wells, K. (2010). Peer-mediated instruction and intervention strategies for students with autism spectrum disorders. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 54, 256–264. Wing, L., & Gould, J. (1979). Severe impairments of social interaction and associated abnormalities in children: Epidemiology and classification. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 9, 11–29.