Philosophical Faculty

The Children in the Centre (CiC) framework, introduced in this paper, facilitates successful multidisciplinary research and design collaboration in computer science and special education with partners in non-academic contexts. The CiC framework emphasizes the active role of children and their families in the research and design processes. Practical tips for including children with special needs in the design and development of technologies are also described.

The increasing number of children who need special need education in Finland also requires an increasing amount of resources from teachers and a restructuring of the education system. Technology can be a part of the solution to this resource problem; however, for the technological solution to work, technologies need to be designed and implemented in new ways. Technologies used in special education in Finland can roughly be divided into four main categories; assistive technologies, communication technologies, and learning software. Last and the newest category concretizing technologies, such as educational robotics, have successfully been used in the Technologies for Children with Individual Needs Project. Possibilities provided by educational robotics have been extensive, not only because of the technology itself, but also because of how the technology has been implemented in innovative projects with school students. From this point of view, students with individual educational needs as well as those involved in inclusive education and harmonized school days could benefit from the use of technology.

Based on results from the Technologies for Children with Individual Needs Project and two case projects, we propose a new multidisciplinary framework for research between computer science, educational technology, and special education. The framework presents a way to conduct research that aims at developing new methods for technology-enhanced special education and for developing adaptable software and hardware tools for individual needs in educational settings.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have a wide variety of skills and preferences. This paper introduces a Kinect®-based game for a technology club for children with autism spectrum disorder, which allows each child’s preferences to be acknowledged. Commercial games were first used to discover how children would interact with a Kinect-based environment. Unfortunately, these games were not designed based on the skills sets of the individual children or to meet educational targets. Thus, a non-commercial game was produced in which moving objects are caught by using hands and legs. This game can be individualised based on preferences and skill level: speed, size, sound, background and the object itself can easily be changed.The game is simple but enjoyable and can work as a platform to develop games in which individual preferences can be utilised. The modifiability of the game content creates new possibilities in terms of various tasks, research designs and educational environments.

Perspective-taking skills and eye-gaze processing are reported to be impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. This paper presents the structure and the theory behind a learning game for perspective-taking skills and eye-gaze following. The game is for lower functioning children with autism spectrum disorder, and it was developed in the CASCATE project. It has the potential to improve autism research and educational settings. It can also offer new avenues for creating teaching and intervention methods.

This paper presents the results of a study on the communication of four children with autis m in a learning environment with multiple technologies. The main focus of the study was on the amount and forms of the children's expressions produced by voice while working at three technology-based workstations: building with bricks, symbol matching, and storytelling. The results indicate that the number of the children's vocal expressions was high, they used multiple ways in communicating despite challenges in language development, and each child had a different kind of communication profile. The results of the study are considered in respect to the variety of the communication and interaction of children with autism, and the aspects to be taken into account in a technology-enhanced learning environment to support the communication of children with autism.

This article presents the results of a review of research on children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and the use of technology. The review included 255 peer-reviewed research articles published between 2000 and 2010, archived in the ACM, IEEE, EBSCO, and ERIC databases. Content analysis was a method for analyzing articles. The results of the review indicated a clear growth in the number of research articles published during the last decade that addressed the issue of technologies for children with autism. Natural settings and field experiments were a typical methodology of the research, which reflected a strong link between academia and the field. On the other hand, the development of technologies took place separately from the user and children with ASD who participated in research activities in the latter stages of research and development. The results also indicated a strong research focus on the identification and provision of solutions to the problems typically related to ASD. Since the review only considered research focusing on problems related to ASD, future research will focus on the emergence of the capabilities and strengths of children afflicted with these disorders.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have been reported to exhibit difficulties in tests measuring mental state understanding, such as the Sally-Anne task. There are also vast performance differences among these children, usually explained by individual or task-related factors. Little is known about the interactional factors of face-to-face assessment situations. The aim of this paper is to examine the Sally-Anne task through video recordings, drawing on Conversation Analysis (CA). Video recordings collected of two children with an ASD and an adult tester during the Sally-Anne assessment have been analysed. The focus is on the sequential organisation of questions and responsive actions. The children drew on diverse resources when responding to the task-related questions (“belief” and “reality” questions): responding verbally, pointing, or manually handling objects. These responses were treated differently by the tester. The children modified their answers (i.e. touching a different object or verbally repeating) in response to limited acknowledgement of their responses on the side of a tester. The study has practical implications for the development and understanding of assessment situations.

Background: The Sally–Anne test has been extensively used to examine children's theory of mind understanding. Many task-related factors have been suggested to impact children's performance on this test. Yet little is known about the interactional aspects of such dyadic assessment situations that might contribute to the ways in which children respond to the test questions.

Aims: To examine the interactional factors contributing to the performance of two children in the Sally–Anne test. To identify the interactional practices used by the tester administering the task and to describe how interactional features can pose challenges in the critical belief and reality questions for both the tester and the testee.

Methods & Procedures: The Sally–Anne test was carried out as part of a project examining children's interactions in a technology-enhanced environment. The present study uses video recordings of two children with communication disorders (one with a current diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder [ASD]) and an adult tester. We draw on a multimodal approach to conversation analysis (CA) to examine the sequential organization of the test questions and answers.

Outcomes & Results: The children drew on diverse resources when producing responses to the test questions: responding verbally, pointing or manually handling objects. The tester treated these responses differently depending on how they were produced. When the child pointed at an object and verbally indicated their response, the tester moved on to the next question apparently accepting the child's answer. When the child manually handled an object or produced a quiet verbal response, the tester repeated the question indicating that the child's actions did not constitute an adequate response to a test question. In response to this, both children modified or changed their previous responses. Through monitoring each other, the tester and the child produced actions highly responsive to the features of each other's conduct, which underpinned the conduct of the test itself.

Conclusions & Implications: Children's responses in the test might not be solely indicative of socio-cognitive capacities but also show orientation to interactional nuances. The study proposes that children can demonstrate diverse ways of responding to questions, yet testers may treat these as test-irrelevant behaviours if they do not correspond to the scoring criteria. A video-based CA study can broaden our understanding of children's pragmatic competencies in responsiveness that may not always embody an expected form. This can have implications for the development of future assessment tasks and revision of existing scoring practices.