Research On The Effectiveness Of Virtual Manipulatives For A Measurement Concept Intervention For Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Measurement concept is an essential component of mathematical skills that are part of the mounting research needs for subject skills for students with autism spectrum disorders.As well as contributing to students’ future mathematical acquisition and logical development,studying measurement concept is also a requirement in curriculum standards of Chinese special schools.Yet,limited literature exists on how to teach measurement concept to students with autism.Manipulatives are often used when teaching concepts in mathematics to students with special needs,including virtual manipulatives.Virtual manipulatives are digital tools that are used to teach specific concepts and use information technology to simulate people or objects on an application on a computer or portable touch screen device.As technology evolves,virtual manipulatives are increasingly being used for interventions for students with autism spectrum disorders.The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the virtual manipulative on measurement concept intervention for students with autism.The virtual manipulative for measurement concept for students with autism was designed and created on a tablet app after consideration of pictures,number pairs,and intervention scripts.This study was conducted with three first grade students with autism,using the multiple probe across behaviors design.In the baseline phase,each student was asked to compare two objects in terms of quantity concepts without prompts and choose the correct one(more,longer or larger).After pre-training on the virtual manipulative,the intervention phase was entered in which each student used the virtual manipulative in combination with a self-guided sheet with task analysis,the “model-lead-test”procedure and a system of the least to most prompts to select the correct one(more,longer or larger).During the maintenance phase,students performed the same actions as in the baseline phase.During the generalization phase,students used the virtual manipulative to select the correct one(more,longer or larger)in the environmental pictures.Visual analyses as well as the effect size Tau-U were used to explore the effectiveness of the virtual manipulative on measurement concept intervention for students with autism.The results of the study showed that the virtual manipulative was effective for all three students in learning measurement concepts and across measurement concepts,was able to help them to complete more measurement concept comparison steps,provided a certain level of generalization of measurement concept and demonstrated high social validity.