Using music and technology social story intervention with children with ASD

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of musical social story intervention as well as iPad® social story intervention on the acquisition of social skills in children with ASD, and to compare these two methods to traditional social story intervention. The study was designed to examine social story intervention in children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. The comparison of three different presentations of social stories is the specific focus of the study. After reviewing the literature on the effects of social stories, music and technology on behavior, this study investigated the benefits of integrating social stories with music and technology. The same social story was presented to each participant using three approaches: musically, on an iPad® and traditionally. The participants of this study were four children, each with a diagnosis of ASD, who were receiving applied behavior analysis therapy in their home. The results of the study indicated that social story intervention was fairly to highly effective for all four participants. With one exception, each participant responded similarly to the iPad® social story, musical social story and traditional social story. Further research is needed to confirm the results of this study and to investigate the effectiveness of musical and iPad® social story intervention. Despite the limited sample size, the information collected and presented in this study can be useful to speech language pathologists working with children on the autism spectrum.