Using tablet assisted Social Stories™ to improve classroom behavior for adolescents with intellectual disabilities.
A quick tablet Social Story before class cuts disruptions and lifts engagement for high-schoolers with severe ID.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three high-school students with severe intellectual disability kept disrupting class.
The team wrote short Social Stories for each teen.
Stories were loaded on Samsung tablets as Prezi slides plus QR codes.
Kids read their story alone for 3-5 minutes before class.
Researchers counted disruptive acts and time on-task across baseline, story use, and two-week follow-up.
What they found
Disruptive behavior dropped for all three students the first day they used the tablet story.
Academic engagement rose at the same time.
Gains stayed high when the teacher moved to a new classroom and two weeks later.
Parents said the teens now asked to read the story at home too.
How this fits with other research
Ozdemir (2008) got the same drop in disruptions with paper Social Stories for younger kids with autism.
The tablet keeps the same story idea but adds video, sound, and teen-friendly tech.
Lancioni et al. (2009) showed students with ID can learn new tech fast; this study shows the tech can also manage behavior.
Leaf et al. (2012) used peer-delivered visual scripts in middle school and saw smaller gains; self-delivered tablet stories may work better for older students.
Why it matters
You can load a three-slide story on any classroom tablet tonight.
Let the student read it right before the tough period.
No extra staff, no printing, no peer training.
If it works for teens with severe ID, it is worth testing with any student who keeps getting kicked out of class.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The present study examined the use of tablet assisted Social Stories™ intervention for three high school students with severe intellectual disabilities whose problem behavior interfered with their learning and caused classroom disruptions. A multiple probe design across participants was employed to test the impact of the tablet assisted SS on the participants' target behaviors. During intervention, the participants read the Social Stories that were created on Prezi and accessed via Quick Response (QR) codes using a Galaxy Tap smart tablet before participating in an academic period. Data indicated that the SS intervention decreased disruptive behavior and increased academic engagement in all three participants. All three demonstrated generalization of behaviors to a nontargeted academic period and maintenance of improved behaviors at the 2-week follow-up.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.05.011