Running head: VISUAL SUPPORT FOR THE STUDENTS WITH AUTISM -1-

Visual Support for the Students with Autism Mengran Chen Michigan State University

VISUAL SUPPORT FOR THE STUDENTS WITH AUTISM Abstract

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In order to improve the Mandarin learning of the students with Autism in my class, I applied the visual support to my class, including the 2 Autistic children and 15 general education students. I provided the students with visual schedules, pictures of instructions, photo cues, videos, toys for story telling and the real objects for introducing new vocabulary. Besides, I created more class activities involving the visual support. The effect of visual aids on students Mandarin learning motivation as well as the listening, speaking, reading and writing skills was investigated. The teacher observation, student survey, the interview with the two Autistic students, pre- and posttest were utilized during the action research. The findings show a conspicuous improvement of learning enthusiasm and language acquisition, especially in target language output and Chinese character recognition. With the utilization of the visual support, the students with Autism were more willing to communicate and involve in class and exhibited better understanding in the target language. Keywords: Visual support, Autism, language acquisition, learning motivation

 VISUAL SUPPORT FOR THE STUDENTS WITH AUTISM Visual Support for the Students with Autism Autism is a developmental disability that significantly affects a students verbal and non-verbal communication, social interaction, and educational performance (Turnbull & Wehmeyer, 2010). According to the Center for Disease control (2005), up to 500,000 people between the ages of 0 to 21 have an autistic spectrum disorder. Due to the increasing number of the children with Autism and an increase in Autism social awareness, it is important for educators to learn and know how to help them. This school year, I have two Autistic students in my class, Ben and Chris (not the real names). Both of them are very intelligent, however, I had a very hard time communicating with them as well as calming them down to participate in class. Once when Ben wasnt picked to answer a question, his response was to scream and throw the pencils and notebooks on the ground. Furthermore, they often get lost when I give directions. As a result, I would like to learn more about how to improve communication with and improve the participation of the children with Autism. After researching about teaching students with Autism and talking with special education teachers, I am informed that whilst communicating with children with Autism, it really helps if they can actually see what you are talking about. Besides, since the two boys with Autism are in normal class settings, I have to consider the special needs of them as well as the general education students learning. So I decide to find out the visual supports affect the Autistic childrens participation and the second language acquisition in a normal Mandarin class setting. -3-

VISUAL SUPPORT FOR THE STUDENTS WITH AUTISM Theoretical Framework

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My research is based on The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS). It is an augmentative communication system developed to help individuals quickly acquire a functional means of communication (Bondy & Frost, 1994). PECS is grounded on the Albert Banduras social learning theory, which posits that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling. Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others, one form an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action (Bandura, 1977). There are four steps involved in the modeling process: Attention- in order for the students to learn, they must pay attention to the modeled behavior. Visual aids could be a good tool to attract students interest and attention. Retention- students need to remember the details of the modeled behaviors. By using visual aids in class consistently and systematically, the students would be able to have a better sense of matching pictures and words and improve the listening comprehension. Reproduction- with more practice, the students would reproduce their own response in accordance with the modeled behavior. Motivation- this theory proposes that learning occurs because of the consequences of a particular behavior has an impact on the motivation of people to engage in the behavior. If the Autistic children believe that they can get the positive outcome from choosing, drawing or responding to the picture or other visual aids, this kind of communication will continue to occur.

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Since the children with Autism have a delay in speech development, this picture-based system will work as a bridge of communication to help them understand my class instruction and express what they have learned.

VISUAL SUPPORT FOR THE STUDENTS WITH AUTISM Literature Review Introduction

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The number of the school children who are classified as being autistic has soared by 56 percent in the last five years. Autism significantly affects a students verbal and nonverbal communication, social interaction, and educational performance (Turnbull & Wehmeyer, 2010). As a Mandarin teacher of two Autistic children, I am searching ways to better communicate with them and motivate their learning. At the same time, I am working with the special education teachers and other world language teachers to better accommodate the Autistic students in the normal class setting. In the present paper, how the visual supports affect the Autistic childrens participation and second language acquisition will be investigated. During the last decade, the number of research on autism has increased significantly. Besides, the recent research about Autism has extended from the identification of Autism, the characteristics of children with Autism, including their communicative, interpersonal, sensory and cognitive difficulties. I reviewed about ten articles or books and sorted them into three themes. First, what are the identification and characteristics of Autism? This information would help me better know my students and understand their behaviors. The book Asperger Syndrome, the Universe and Everything gives an intriguing insight into the life of the Autistic children. Rao & Gagies book Exceptional Lives provides a detailed description of the distinct characteristics of Autism in terms of the childrens social and language development, intellectual functioning as well as their behaviors.

 VISUAL SUPPORT FOR THE STUDENTS WITH AUTISM Secondly, the advantages that the visual support is brought to the Autistic children. Since children with autism are visual rather than auditory learners (Cohen, 1998), the visual support would provide them with preferred learning styles and methods. It would help the students be more focused during the learning process. Thirdly, how to develop and provide the visual supports to children? Andy Bondy and Lori Frost (2002) introduced the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS), illustrated how to apply it into teaching the students with Autism and provide detailed visual strategies to improve communication. Maguire (2005) suggests how visual aids would help Autistic children make transition from one activity to another. The identification and characteristics of Autistic children Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are lifelong conditions with varying but often, high levels of associated cognitive, communication, social, behavioral and mental health impairments (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). It often occurs with other psychiatric or neurodevelopment disorders, most commonly Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (40-50% depending on age of assessment Gadow et al. 2005), anxiety (35% Gadow et al, 2005) and depression (30% Wing 1981, 37% Ghaziuddin, Weidmer-Mikhail and Ghaziuddin, 1998). Kenneth Hall stated in his book Asperger Syndrome, the Universe and Everything that the Autistic children usually have difficulties with crowds, concentrating, being patient with and understanding of others, attention, being part of a group, staying still and making decisions and changes. In Turnbull & Wehmeyers book, the characteristics of Autistic children were described clearly. First of all, students with autism have a broad range of language -7-

VISUAL SUPPORT FOR THE STUDENTS WITH AUTISM abilities, ranging from no verbal communication to quite complex communication

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(Myles et al., 2003; National Research Council, 2001). Secondly, Ozsivadjian, Knott & Magiati (2012) and Turnbull agreed and pointed out that the children with Autism manifest difficulties in social interaction, lacking peer relationship and have a high rate of suffering anxiety disorders. Thirdly, they often show repetitive behavior, which includes strictly following the routines, being obsessed with some specific objects, such as electronics, and keep moving their bodies. These behaviors include an insistence on sameness (Richler, Bishop, Kleinke & Lord, 2007). Fourthly, students with autism sometimes have problem behavior. Some of the children will appear the self-injured behaviors, for example: hitting the head on the wall, scratching themselves intensively (Hyman & Towbin, 2007). Besides, some kids also show aggression, tantrum and property destruction. Fifthly, children and youth with autism frequently experience sensory and movement disorders related to taste, tactile sensitivity, visual/auditory sensitivity and energy levels (ORiordan & Passetti, 2006). Last, according to Fombonne (2003), the levels of intelligence of children with Autism are various; some are gifted students or having talents in certain areas while some are having intellectual disabilities. The research asserted that some Autistic children have exceptional abilities, as measured by formal IQ tests. The advantages of visual support The children with Autism prefer the visual learning styles rather than the auditory one. And they are more responsive to the picture instead of words during the process of communication (Cohen, 1998). According to a recent research by Dr. Laurent Mottron,

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people with Autism concentrate more brain resources in the area associated with visual detection and identification, and conversely, have less activity in the areas used to plan and control thoughts and actions (Mottron, 2011). This might explain and support the fact that they usually have outstanding capacities in visual tasks. Besides, the research shows that the Autistic kids are easy to get lost of the oral instructions from the teachers and any other auditory materials. Since it takes them a fraction of second longer to process a sound than others, we can imagine how longer time will be needed for them to process and understand a whole sentence. Besides, visual supports could work as a bridge for the students with Autism to get access to and interact the outside world. Even though they have difficulties in expressing themselves, the pictures and other visual tools can help them engage in life. Dr. Temple Grandin, who used to be a child with Autism, shared his experience I translate both spoken and written words into full-color movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head. Visual thinking has enabled me to build entire systems in my imagination. (Grandin, 1996) Moreover, the visual system help the children express his or her thoughts (Rao & Gagie, 2006). Dr. Grandin posits that some individuals with autism exhibit the characteristics and strength in drawing, other arts, and building thins which building toys such as Legos, which impacted how they learn and express themselves. Develop and provide visual supports for the Autistic children To start with, the use of visual aid could be involved in transitions in class. Dettmer, Simpson, Myles & Ganz (2000) stated that the application of visual supports contributes

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a significant decrease of time that the students transit to the next activity. Schmit, Alper, Raschke & Ryndak also pointed out the benefits of using photo cues to make transitions successfully. Moreover, informing the students of the activity change in advance and combing both visual and oral instructions would better decrease the students anxiety and improve transitions. The second, the use of visual schedules can help the individual remain calm and reduce inappropriate behaviors (Mesibov et al., 2005). According to Catherine Davies (2008), there several steps for setting up a visual schedule: to choose the format of the scheduleobject schedules, picture or photograph schedules or written schedules, to decide on the length of the schedule based on the childrens needs and abilities, teach schedule use and monitor how the children are doing, and be consistent in showing all the activities on the schedule, because the kids might feel frustrated when unexpected things happen. The third, using a social story. A social story is a story written according to a specific guideline to describe a situation in terms of relevant cues and common responses (Kirby, 2005). Ali and Frederickson (2006) proposed that with exhibiting the social stories to students with Autism, they would get a better idea of how to address with the different social situations. The teachers could develop a social story by analyze the task; supply a visual support at each step so the child can understand the step and describe each step with the visual support (Rao& Gagie, 2006). Last but not least, applying PECS. The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is an augmentative communication system developed to help individuals quickly acquire a functional means of communication (Bondy & Frost, 1994). It is a functional

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means of communication for individuals with a variety of communication challenges. It starts from teaching the physical exchange of a picture, to teach how to make a request by combing a sentence starter and a picture, and to interact, give feedback or make comments on interesting activities or items. (Overcash et al., 2010) Conclusion Taken together, the results illustrate the identification and characteristics of Autism clearly. Reading the research gained me an insight of the world of the students with Autism and helped me better understand my students. Besides, although there is very limited formal research on applying visual support to teach the Autistic students, there is sourceful studies and evidence stating the advantages of it. The research indicate that the visual support can attract the students attention, enhance their motivation and interest, facilitate transitions, concentrate the abstract concepts, and give the student a way to express his or her ideas (Rao & Gagie, 2006; Davies, 2008; Grandin, 1996; Ali & Frederickson, 2006). Moreover, the results provide the information about the ways of developing and using visual support in schools and classrooms, for example, the photo cues for transitions of class activities (Dettmer, Simpson, Myles & Ganz, 2000), the visual schedule (Mesibov et al., 2005; Davies, 2008), the social stories (Kirby, 2005; Ali & Frederickson, 2006) and PECS (Bondy & Frost, 1994). More studies about the detailed teaching methods and assessment of applying the visual supports in class should be done. It is important to know how to involve the visual supports in the classes of different subjects and how much academic improvement the

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Autistic children can achieve with the help of visual support. Also, since there are more Autistic children in the formal schools now, how to help their learning in a formal class setting will be a crucial problem we teachers face. It would be very helpful if more studies can include the information about it. Method Research settings and participants My action research setting was two of my 4th grade Mandarin classes. There were two Autistic children and 15 other children participating in the research. All participants, 7 boys and 10 girls, were between nine and ten years old. To protect the identity of my studys participants, I did not use their real names. Ben was a high-functioning Autistic child, who was in a 13-student class. He was very smart but showed difficulties in social interaction and communication. Chris was a child with Asperger syndrome- an autism spectrum disorder. He was in a small class of 4 students. Research approach and design I applied both qualitative and quantitative approaches to conduct my action research. First of all, as to the qualitative approach, I chose the participant observer design. It allowed me to have an opportunity to interact with the participants, to get a firsthand observation about how the plan works with the participants, to experience what is unexpected and to build a relationship of trust so that they could feel comfortable to share their thoughts and ideas with me. Secondly, in terms of the quantitative research design, I used the survey research- one of the descriptive research. Since I teach the Autistic children in a normal class setting, I was able to hear the opinions and ideas from both

 VISUAL SUPPORT FOR THE STUDENTS WITH AUTISM groups- children with Autism and general education students. The survey research provided me with more information about the current status of childrens learning and students perceptions of using the visual support in class. Thirdly, I tried the correlational designs, so that I could examine whether and to what degree the Autistic childrens learning can improve with the use of visual support. Data collection I collected data using four different techniques. First, I recorded field note observations of the performance and learning outcome of my two groups of students and these recordings became a part of my daily routine (qualitative data source). Second, I conducted several interviews with the two Autistic children for the purpose of getting to know their feelings and thoughts about the visual supports (qualitative data source). Third, I distributed a Likert-type scale survey focusing on the effects of visual supports on other students (quantitative data source). Fourth, I involved oral tests in my data collection (quantitative data source). The multiple data sources and the multiple data-collection methods ensured the trustworthiness of my data. (Mertler, 2008, P. 115) Data analysis I applied two various methods to make the data analysis. First, after having gathered the qualitative data, I conducted the inductive analysis of the information. The process of this analysis could be described as: organization, description and interpretation (Mertler, 2008, P. 141). Second, I used descriptive statistics to analysis the numerical data I collected from the surveys and formal assessments. Out of the three categories of the descriptive statistics, I applied the measures of central tendency, which was described as - 13 -

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the collective level of performance, attitude, or opinion of a group of study participants (Mertler, 2008, P.146). Furthermore, the measures of relationship were utilized to analyze data from studies using correlational designs. Limitations There were two major limitations of my study. On one hand, the size of my study participants was very small- just two Autistic children and 15 general education children. Also, the time for the action research is too short to collect convincible information of students learning outcome and communication improvement. Findings Overall, the two students with autism both showed a noticeable improvement in their participation and Mandarin test. Besides, surprisingly, there is a great enhancement in learning enthusiasm and test among the general education students. The two students with Autism While observing Ben and Chriss participation in class, I noted down a tally mark when they gave me a good response, including following a direction in a given time and answering a question correctly. Bens participation tally marks rose up from 6 per week to 14 per week, while Chriss tally marks went up from 8 per week to 19 per week (see Figure 1). As I listened and watched them during the research, it is apparent that they are more involved in the class activities and more eager to come to the Mandarin class. Enthusiasm for learning also reflected in students comments during and after the action research. The following are some of their comments: Mandarin class is so fun!

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I like this little pig and the butterfly, can I touch it? (I brought the two toys to class and showed to students when telling a story) I think this memory game is more fun with the pictures not the English words. Moreover, I conducted an oral pretest and posttest for all students. They were asked 10 questions in Mandarin and needed to response in Mandarin. With the application of the visual aids, Ben and Chriss test scores increased by 14% and 11% relatively (see Figure 2). Figure 1
20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Ben Chris

Ben and Chriss class participation tally marks

The general education students Ben, Chris and the other 15 general education students were questioned about their likes and dislikes of the visual support in Mandarin class in an attempt to determine the impact of visual aids on every student in class. As shown in the Figure 3, 16 out of 17

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students enjoyed the visual support or liked it very much and most of them agreed that it helped them better memorize the new vocabulary. In addition, the average test score of the 15 general education students also increased from 73% to 81% (see Figure 2). Figure 2
90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Pretest Posttest Ben Chris General education student

Pretest and posttest

Figure3 General education students Do you like the visual support? survey results Questions: 1. Do you like the visual support (pictures, videos, photo cues and the visual schedule in mandarin class)? 2. Do you think it helped your Mandarin learning? How? 3. Whats your favorite Mandarin class activity?

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like it very much like it so so don't like it

More results came while comparing students participation and cognition in Mandarin learning. With the help of the visual aids, I am able to use more target language in class. And I observed that the students can gradually picked up the sentences I used. For example, When giving students feedback, I pointed to the pictures of different feedbacks, including very good!, good job!, try again! and said them in Mandarin. It was surprising to see that the kids could pick up very fast and the big improvement in students language output. Another interesting finding is that the students showed more excitement in learning Chinese characters, especially Ben. When I introduce the new characters, he was able to immediately make connections with some characters we have learned before and find the similarities between them. Encouraged to find connections between the pictures and characters, the students were more participated in character recognition and writings.

VISUAL SUPPORT FOR THE STUDENTS WITH AUTISM Discussion My findings show a marked enhancement in class participation, enthusiasm in

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mandarin learning as well as the test scores of both the students with Autism and the general education students. Although the action research is conducted in such a short period of time, the positive results I received are impressive. The Albert Banduras social learning theory guided me to involve more modeling in class. With applying more visual support, the students with Autism are more likely to pay attention to my speaking, show their understanding by matching the pictures with Mandarin words and be motivated to reproduce more target language. Besides, the increase of students target language output is the outcome of the growth of my language input. The Picture Exchange Communication System allowed me to use more target language in class, which is beneficial for every student to practice listening as well as increase language output. By matching the instructions they heard with the pictures or the real objects, the Autistic students gained a better comprehension and were capable to response in a given time. Students improvement in learning Chinese characters is due to the close connections of Chinese characters and pictures. Presented with both the pictures and the characters, the students are able to build the connection and get a deeper understanding of the characters meanings and character structures. Since most of the Autistic children are visual learners, they are more easily to combine the pictures to the characters and look for the connections thus better memorize the new characters.

 VISUAL SUPPORT FOR THE STUDENTS WITH AUTISM Conclusion In conclusion, my action research supported that the visual aids can attract the students attention, enhance their motivation and interest, facilitate transitions and concentrate the abstract concepts. Through the incorporation of various visual support, the Autistic students class participation and language acquisition gained an enhancement. For the future research of applying visual support in teaching students with Autism, there are a few recommendations that might be helpful. First, it is necessary to make differentiation in using visual supports in the Autistic students and the general education students. The former requires more repetition and detailed explanation. Second, it is beneficial for students language acquisition with the scaffolding instructions while utilizing the visual supports. The students could start from listening practice of finding the correct pictures, to matching pictures and words, and then reproduce the language when showed the pictures. This action research not only increased my students enthusiasm in Mandarin learning, but also rekindled my enthusiasm in teaching. When I heard my students saying to Mandarin is so fun!, I love Mandarin class!. I feel very accomplished and also realized that the important role of a teacher in deciding students motivation and enthusiasm toward learning. Now, I look forward to applying more visual support in my class and making a differentiation of it for the students with Autism and the general education students to help each student experience success. - 19 -

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