I-8: Impacto de las desigualdades energéticas mundiales

learning materials for children with ASC and TD children. Interactive learning materials are here defined as those that allow for touchscreen manipulation of on-screen stimuli. Non- interactive learning materials are here defined as images that do not respond to touch (static

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and automatically rotating images) and traditional paper-books. Study 1 (iconicity and symbol learning) found no significant difference in symbolic understanding between the interactive condition (manually rotating images) and the non-interactive conditions

(automatically rotating images and static 2D images) with a high level of performance across groups. Study 3 (label learning) found no significant difference in label recall both

immediately and after a delay between the e-book conditions and the paper-book condition. Finally, Study 4 (narrative comprehension) found no significant difference in performance on two comprehension measures between the e-book conditions and the paper-book condition. This suggests that, for both children with ASC and TD children, interactivity did not influence learning across different paradigms and materials. Previous research suggests that

touchscreen interactivity may allow information to be processed as an active experience (Russo-Johnson et al., 2017), changing the way information is processed and retained (Highfield & Goodwin, 2013). Several studies have found that interactive iPad applications are more effective than paper-based mediums in improving the communication and vocabulary of children with ASC (Lorah et al., 2013; Lorah, et al., 2015; Sigafoos et al., 2013). However, the current findings suggest that, despite positive opinion and user-

preference towards iPads (Clark et al., 2015; Richter & Courage, 2017), interactive learning materials may not translate into superior learning outcomes compared to traditional paper- based mediums. Overall, interactive features do not directly positively or negatively influence the task performance of children with ASC and TD children in the current research. Potential explanations for these findings will be outlined in this section.

There is a possibility that the materials used in the current research may not have been sufficiently sensitive to detect any benefit of interactivity. In Study 1 (iconicity and symbol learning) a high level of robust symbolic responding was found across all conditions (2D, automatic rotation and interactive), for both groups. This is encouraging, suggesting that coloured photographs are enough to create symbols with maximum ‘transparency’ (Fuller, 1997), and that additional measures to further improve pictorial realism (such as three-dimensional context and interactivity) are not necessary for symbol learning. Coloured

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photographs may provide the optimal conditions to foster symbolic understanding in children with ASC, enabling this population to perform as well as their TD peers. However, as

coloured photographs were the baseline level of iconicity within this study, potentially accounting for the low levels of associative responding (3.1%), this may have masked the influence of interactivity within this experiment. Three-dimensional context (provided through interactivity and animation) may improve the pictorial realism of symbols that are not already considered ‘transparent’, such as ‘translucent’ black and white photographs or cartoons (Fuller, 1997). Future research could replicate this study using ‘translucent’ symbols, potentially increasing the sensitivity of the experiment to measure the influence of interactivity and animation on symbolic understanding.

In Studies 3 and 4 (investigating label learning and narrative comprehension

respectively), the e-book used was not specially designed for the experiments and invited interaction with both relevant features and non-essential components within the story. In Study 3, both the target and distractor animals could be interacted with simultaneously during the labelling activity, responding to touch through animation and sound effects. In Study 4, the e-book provided sound effects and animations that highlighted both the central plot and miscellaneous features that were peripheral to the main storyline. Therefore, the interactive features within the e-book may not be highlighting salient learning information, potentially encouraging participants to focus on irrelevant details (De Jong & Bus, 2002; Krcmar & Cingel, 2014).

Children with ASC may be more susceptible to the detrimental influence of extraneous interactive and multimedia features due to weak central coherence, the tendency to prioritise the processing of local detail at the expense of the gestalt (Frith, 1989; Omar & Bidin, 2015). Moreover, some children with ASC experience executive dysfunction, potentially leading to increased distractibility and difficulty shifting attention between relevant and irrelevant stimuli (Christ et al., 2007; Richard & Lajiness-O’Neill, 2015; Rinehart et al., 2001). However, although the extraneous features included with the e-book had the potential to disadvantage performance, it is noteworthy that children with ASC did not perform significantly worse using

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the e-book compared to the paper-book for both experiments, despite slightly higher comprehension scores in the paper-book condition compared to the e-book conditions in Study 4 for both groups. Any potential bias towards extraneous information in the e-book conditions did not lead to significantly poorer learning. Despite this, it is possible that using interactive and multimedia features in more targeted ways (such as highlighting only relevant learning information) would improve learning in both children with ASC and TD children (Frith, 1989; Omar & Bidin, 2015; Takacs et al., 2015). Future research could investigate this by manipulating the relevance of the interactive and multimedia features within an e-book and examining this influence on the label learning and narrative comprehension of children with ASC and TD children. This could be achieved by creating three different versions of the same e-book story that highlight different information through interactivity and multimedia features. Children could experience a story and labelling activity in one of three conditions. First, an e-book that highlights only the relevant learning information. Second an e-book that highlights both relevant learning information and irrelevant information. Finally, an e-book that highlights only irrelevant information. Children could then be tested on their label recall and narrative comprehension to compare learning between conditions. Engagement could be measured in the same way as the current research during storybook reading and compared to performance on a label recall task and narrative comprehension measures to investigate whether engagement with relevant/irrelevant features influences learning.

Study 2 (labelling and symbol learning) did not involve iPad interactivity nor compared symbolic understanding between interactive and non-interactive conditions. However, the inclusion of interactive objects (responsive to touch with light up and sound effect features) allowed for a spontaneous measure of word-picture-referent mapping through free-play and object exploration as opposed to the forced-choice design of previous studies in which non- interactive objects were used. Such studies found that TD children more often demonstrated referential responding when the target was labelled compared to when it was not (Hartley & Allen, 2015b; Preissler & Bloom, 2007). This contrasted with participants with ASC, who exhibited no significant difference in referential responding between the labelled and

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unlabelled conditions (Hartley & Allen, 2015b). In the current study, although no significant difference was found between the labelled and unlabelled conditions, children with ASC performed as well as their TD peers, with a high level of symbolic responding across groups and conditions. It is possible that a spontaneous measure of symbolic understanding, such as free-play with interactive objects, may reveal competencies in word-picture-referent mapping in some children with ASC. Interactive object exploration may allow for a more naturalistic measure of symbolic understanding, more similar to everyday learning than forced-choice tasks and allowing for active task participation (Schreibman et al., 2015; Yurovsky, Boyer, Smith, & Yu, 2013).

However, it is important to note that all pictures presented alongside the objects in the exploration phase (to test for associative responding) were coloured photographs, providing maximum iconicity and ‘transparency’ (Fuller, 1997), potentially masking the influence of labelling within this experiment. As previously mentioned with regards to Study 1 (iconicity and symbol learning), future research could replicate Study 2 using ‘translucent’ black and white symbols as opposed to coloured photographs, potentially increasing the sensitivity of the experiment to measure the influence of labelling on symbolic understanding.

6.2. Question 2: How do children with ASC engage with interactive learning materials?