Abstract:

Children with neurodevelopmental disorders are commonly described as having difficulties in social communication. For example, these difficulties are commonly observed in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and Social Communication Disorder (SCD) [1]. These problems are usually observed in spontaneous conversations with peers. For example, it is well documented that children with ASD fail to understand figurative language or indirect speech in comparison with typically developing kids. Although these problems are present to a greater or a lesser degree depending on the disorder, they are essential for the correct socialization of these children. Therefore, training social communication skills of these children could lead to an improvement of their relationship with peers, above all when they attend to ordinary schools following inclusive settings [2].

Social communication is a complex area and it depends on linguistic, cognitive and cultural factors [3], and existent materials to assess and train it sometimes do not cover all the skills that empirical studies have described [4]. For example, most of the materials are based on pure pragmatic skills (i.e. use of linguistic context), and they do not cover other aspects strongly related to theory of mind (i.e. intentionality, emotion understanding or gestures). In addition, some materials are not adapted to children with neurodevelopmental disorders and mobile applications (app) used as serious games are seen a good tool to compensate their communication and motivational difficulties.

As a consequence, a new app was created to train different aspects of social communication. It was based on previous empirical studies in pragmatics and social communication in children with and without neurodevelopmental disorders. These aspects include ten social communication skills (trained in ten levels), like understanding figurative language (metaphors, idioms and similes) or the comprehension of different speech acts (direct and indirect). In each level a different context is presented (i.e. zoo, circus, school, etc.), and the child goes through six situations (screens) in which he/her has to use different social communication skills. In each screen, the child has always three forced choice options, and when the response is correct, he/she is awarded; whereas when the response is correct, he/she is given a clue to look for the correct one. The game ends when the child achieves the ten prizes.

As a conclusion, the app obtained will improve the special needs education community, because it will be a practical and motivational method of intervention in the area of social communication for children with neuroevelopmental disorders. It is also a good tool to provide data to the scientific community on social communication difficulties among or different disorders, as the effectiveness of the app will be validated as a method in children with and without neurodevelopmental disorders. Afterwards it will be available to download and use for the practitioners and professionals in schools. Practical and theoretical implications of the app are also discussed.

Keywords:

Social communication, pragmatics, App, training, intervention, neurodevelopmental disorders, autistic spectrum disorders (ASD).