Augmenting social stories with differentiated instruction: a study of social skills acquisition in children with autism spectrum disorder

Social communication impairment is pervasive among children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Social Story is well-known as a supplement to improving social behaviours. This requires a significant amount of human intervention to educate ASD children through engaging and relevant social stories on the acceptable social behaviours. Caretakers, however, cannot afford to give full individualised attention given the number of children under their care. This study augmented the animated social stories with differentiated instruction to overcome drawbacks of existing approaches. The evaluation results of this study suggest the proposed approach is effective in improving social skills of the participants.