Presenters: Dallin Hendry, College of Family, Home and Social Sciences, Psychology
Authors: Dallin Hendry, Madelyn McGee, Shelby Taylor
Faculty Advisors: Cade Charlton, College of Education, Counseling Psychology & Special Education
Institution: Brigham Young University
For students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the global COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted their lives and limited their access to education. Remote learning has been linked to increased anxiety, fear, and grief in students with ASD. Many of these students struggled to develop and master Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in traditional contexts and these skills deficits are likely to persist if not increase as a result of social isolation and a lack of access to intensive instruction during the pandemic. These circumstances represent a clear and immediate need for novel, innovative, and portable technologies to deploy intensive instruction to students most at need. An underutilized technology, live animation, may address many of these concerns. Animoji, a live animation feature of a video communication service provided by Apple, allows the user to change their appearance into the appearance of an animated animal allowing for dynamic instruction and exaggerated modeling of emotional states. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of explicit instruction in SEL using a live animation avatar on SEL with students with ASD. Participants included individuals between ages 7-17 with an educational diagnosis of ASD who had limited emotional recognition and empathy skills, as identified by their caregivers. The research team used a multiple baseline design across participants to evaluate changes in SEL during baseline and following the introduction of explicit instruction. The data collected by the research team using the Cambridge Mindreading Face-Voice Battery for Children (CAM-C), the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS), and emotional response scenarios suggest that live animation avatars can be used remotely to model appropriate social-emotional skills. In addition to remote instruction, we propose the use of live animation, specifically animoji, as a viable method of SEL instruction for children with ASD in a variety of socially important contexts.