Two student researchers from the Read Lab and recent graduates (congrats!!), Tess Miller and Erin Furay have just been accepted to present their initial findings from our study of e-book reading with young children on the autism spectrum at the nationally recognized Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) 2016 Special Topics Meeting on Technology and Media in Children’s Development in October (whew, that’s a mouthful). This comes after a busy spring quarter in which Tess, Erin and their co-investigator, graduate student in the SCU school of Education, Katie Ciffone, also presented the work at San Jose State’s 2016 Spartan Psychological Association Research Conference (SPARC), at the annual conference of the Western Psychological Association (WPA), and at Santa Clara’s own First Annual Compassion in Action for Children Research Conference. They have spent the last two months gathering so much great feedback from other researchers, therapists and parents on this inspiring work.
The team recently wrapped up the first version of the study, which looks at the differences between how children with autism respond to and remember specially designed stories read to them on e-books either with or without the scaffolding of a therapist. With the amazing volunteer help of 10 local families with children on the spectrum, this one-of-a-kind study has already given us some promising insights into the role that both the therapist and an e-reader can play in helping children learn from stories.
We are so proud of this work and how it highlights the abilities of even very young children on the spectrum working against big challenges in their language development. We are also super proud of Tess, Erin and Katie for all the months of hard work and love they have poured (and are still pouring) into this project.
And now… while preparing for the SRCD conference, we are also busy expanding our repertoire of books and planning a follow up study for the fall. Book topic suggestions, ideas and questions welcome! Stay tuned…