Narrative comprehension and engagement with e-books vs. paper-books in autism spectrum condition

Reading ebooks and printed books with parents: A case study of children with autism spectrum disorders

Background and aims

Ebooks have become a ubiquitous presence in many classrooms today. Yet, empirical evidence on literacy development has not been well produced, especially for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This mixed-method case study aimed to explore how four children with ASD interact with ebooks and printed books with parents at home.

Methods

Four children (age 5-7 years) with ASD and their parents read one animated ebook and another printed book over four separate sessions. Parents also explained preselected word meanings to their children. In this mixed-method case study, we examined multiple quantitative and qualitative sources of evidence related to reading with parents at home.

Results

Quantitatively, all four children with ASD learned more word meanings from ebook than from the printed book, and three demonstrated a higher engagement with ebook than the printed book reading. Qualitatively, the majority of parents felt their children's engagement was higher with ebook than with printed book. Children with ASD tend to have tactile-related experiences while reading the printed book and auditory-related experiences during the ebook reading. Qualitative data also demonstrated a particular feature reported to be beneficial in previous research could be distracting for some children with ASD.

Implications

When parents are trained to explain critical word meanings to their children, animated ebooks can effectively improve the meaning-making skills of children with ASD. Findings also highlight the importance of individualized attention when choosing and using ebooks for children with ASD.

Prompting visual attention to print versus pictures during shared book reading with digital storybooks for preschoolers with ASD compared to TD peers

Prompting children to look at print and picture content during shared book reading (SBR) facilitates joint attention and early language and literacy learning opportunities for typically developing (TD) children. Whether preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) respond similarly to bids for joint attention during SBR and how autism characteristics impact upon their responsiveness is currently unclear. This is important given these children are at risk of persistent language and literacy challenges. To address this, we examined the effects of prompts that were solely verbal versus verbal with pointing on visual attention to print and picture targets during SBR with digital storybooks for 34 children with ASD and 27 TD peers. Children with ASD looked as frequently at print targets, but less frequently at picture targets, when prompted compared to TD peers. Both prompt types showed similar effects in shifting children's visual attention to print and picture targets at group level. When groups were combined, autism characteristics influenced children's responsiveness to verbal versus verbal with pointing prompts to print targets, but not to picture targets; children looked more frequently at print targets as autism characteristics increased when verbal prompts were used, with a large effect shown (d = 0.91). Overall, findings suggest that prompting children with ASD to look at print and pictures during SBR with digital storybooks may be helpful in facilitating joint attention to storybook content. Implications for the development of effective early interventions aimed at providing emergent literacy support for children with ASD are discussed. LAY SUMMARY: We looked at how prompting impacted upon where children with autism look during shared book reading with digital storybooks compared to children without autism using eye-tracking. We found the target (pictures or print) was what mattered and number of autism characteristics impacted how responsive children were to different types of prompts. This helps us to understand how prompting may help children with autism to look at print or pictures during shared book reading which could support language or reading interventions.