Stepbystep: Design of an interactive pictorial activity game for teaching generalization skills to children with autism

Abstract

Translating acquired behavioral skills from training environments to daily-life situations is difficult for children with autism. This study introduces the StepByStep platform, in which pictorial activity schedules are implemented. Design decisions that increase the sameness in the environment and the comfort of the children were implemented to isolate the learning task and promote the training of generalization skills. Differently from existing visual scheduling systems, we use photographs of the child that is trained instead of general activity pictures. The design promotes the features of easy individualization of the training and of playfulness while learning. StepByStep was used by one participant in a pilot study, who showed behavior acquisition and translation to real life situations. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2013.