Video as an educational tool in Autism, an under researched topic.

Video as an educational tool in Autism, an under researched topic.

My first slide has nothing to do with my research as such, it is just an example, a parody perhaps of an educational video, I made when I was learning the trade. Don’t be fooled, there is a lot in it that subtly bears on the question of what it is people attend to when they are watching any kind of performance. After that I will give an introduction and background Followed by a methodology And then proceed into a critique of whether my aims are achievable or not. More details are available from the poster downloadable on this site:http://www.larry-arnold.info/NAS2008/Poster2008.pdf

Video available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK06hIBgB8g

Some existing researchGolan, O., Baron-Cohen, S., Hill, J. J., & Golan, Y. (2006). 'Reading the Mind in Films' - testing recognition of complex emotions and mental states in adults with and without autism spectrum conditions. Social Neuroscience, 1(2), 111-123.

Klin, A Jones, W Schultz, R Volkmar, F Cohen, D (2002) Visual Fixation Patterns During Viewing of Naturalistic Social Situations as Predictors of Social Competence in Individuals With Autism Arch Gen Psychiatry. 59 pp. 809-816.

Nikopoulos,C Keenan,M (2006) Video modelling and behaviour analysis: A guide for teaching social skills to children with autism modelling and behaviour analysis: A guide for teaching social skills to children with autism, Jessica Kingsley Publishers: London

“This will kill That!”

“For a long time, Gossip Tourangeau, intelligent as was his glance,had appeared not to understand Dom Claude.

He interrupted. “~Pasque-dieu~! what are your books, then?”

"Here is one of them," said the archdeacon. And opening the window of his cell he pointed out with his finger the immense church of Notre-Dame, which, outlining against the starry sky the black silhouette of its two towers, its stone flanks, its monstrous haunches, seemed an enormous two-headed sphinx, seated in the middle of the city. The archdeacon gazed at the gigantic edifice for some time in silence, then extending his right hand, with a sigh, towards the printed book which lay open on the table, and his left towards Notre-Dame, and turning a sad glance from the book to the church,

"Alas," he said, "this will kill that."

Put most simply:

“Is video an effective teaching tool for autistic people?”

Or turning the question round to put autism at the head of the inquiry:

“Is it in the nature of autism that video is an effective method of teaching?”

And as a necessary continuation of the inquiry:

“Will the understanding of autistic cognition and perception and its relationship to video help to create more effective video?”

This in essence being the practical application of this piece of research.

“What is special about autism that would make video a more appropriate teaching medium?”

If it is a different cognitive style, then how does that effect the interpretation and comprehension of visually mediated didactic?

What is the research question ?

The experiment for pragmatic purposes has to be grounded in the right “ecological” framework it being necessary to ask and hopefully answer the questions:

“Are the right videos being made and sold?”

“Do market forces and consumer demand select for the most appropriate penetration of educational video?”

However the empirical core of the research remains.

“Will the understanding of autistic cognition and perception and its relationship to video help to create more effective video?”

“Do the social factors regarding education in have a significant effect that leaves video as a less intrusive medium of education for the group in question?”

Why an ethical methodology?

• Firstly the project is of potential value to the wider group I am studying.

• Secondly it deals with the participant volunteers in a respectful way, not as objects of curiosity but as my own peers.

• Thirdly I have gone even further in wishing to do more than merely inform the participants of the results at the end (which is merely politeness) but to give ‘right of reply’ (Schostak & Schostak 2008) interactively in the critique of the process through setting up a blog, where I report progress in the full public eye. There is also a participants mailing list which is intended to allow the volunteers to communicate between themselves and with me, any questions about the project, suggestions, dissatisfaction or anything else.

Pragmatics• Initial recruitment on line was through a questionnaire using the Bristol University Online Survey

software. The questionnaire also advertised off line.

• A series of multiple choice questions was presented to ascertain to participants use of video, video preferences, demographic indicators and information about diagnosis.

• Recruitment of controls is intended to be an opportunity sample from my home University.

• Recruitment of the second group of AS participants is taking place via local Universities and FE Colleges who are prepared to co-operate. In one instance co-operation was not forthcoming due what I would describe as ‘gatekeeping’ and the somewhat patronising perception received that an autistic researcher could not be trusted with vulnerable autistic adults, despite all the ethical procedures having been followed.

• The next stages of the research will involve the viewing of a specifically edited video, and answering questions designed to elicit both comprehension and other cognitive and perceptual factors relating to the medium itself.

• In addition there will be focus group sessions and a longitudinal follow up to determine the degree to which the presented material had been learnt and impinged itself on long term memory.

Responses to online recruitment questionnaire

Popper, K., (1963) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge: London

Amaral D, (2005) A Multidisiciplinary Biomedical Approach to Autism Research: The Autism Phenome Project. Facing the Challenge, meeting the challenge conference http://www.nas.org.uk/content/1/c4/78/67/Friday_DavidAmaral6.pdf retrieved 07/02/2008

Ross, L., (1977) The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process. In L Berkowitz ed. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Vol 10 New York Academic Press

Ross, L., Lepper, M. R., & Hubbard M (1975) Perseverance in self perception and social perception: Biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32 pp. 880 -892

Popperian science vs biased interpretation

A Caveat for all researchers.

“ Failure to replicate findings can be explained in a number of ways. Either the phenomenon does not exist and the initial, positive finding was a random event. Or perhaps there were differences in the samples used; one study may have tested higher-functioning or older individuals while another used those with lower IQ. Many studies have small sample sizes and as a consequence have insufficient statistical power to reveal between group differences. Procedural differences may also yield different outcomes......"

Bowler, D., (2002) Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Psychological Theory and Research Chichester: Wiley

Arnold, L (2002) question to Gillberg C The epidemiology of autism paper presented to National Autistic Society “world of difference” conference 2002

Arnold, L (2002) Rainbows end. Towards a multi-axial autistic landscape A neuro-divergent's perspective on mapping the autistic phenomenon http://www.larry-arnold.info/Neurodiversity/Mission/rainbow.htm

Arnold, L., (2005) Whichever Way you look at it it's still Autism (DVD) Shining City Visions: Coventryhttp://www.shiningcityvisions.com .

Rejecting the “Kraepelinian” paradigm. Alzheimer, A (1921) Histologie und Histopathologie. Written with Franz Nissl. Posthumous, in: Arbeiten über die Grosshirnrinde mit besondererBerücksichtigung der pathologischen Anatomie der geisteskrankheiten. Jena,

Asperger, H. (1944) 'Autistic Psycopathy in Childhood', in Frith, U. (2003) Autism: explaining the enigma, 2nd edn. Blackwell: Oxford

Bleuler, E (1911) Dementia praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias. In: G. Aschaffenburg (ed.), Handbuch der Psychiatrie.Spezieller Teil. 4. Abteilung, 1.Hälfte. Franz Deuticke: Leipzig undWien.

Bentall, R. (2003) Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature in Medicine, London: Allen Lane.

Charcot, J.M., (1875) Sur les localizations cérébrales. Comptes-Rendus des Seánces et Mémoires de la Société de Biologie, 24, 400-404.

Down, J.L., (1887) Mental Affections of Childhood and Youth. London:Churchill (1990) re-issued as Classics in Developmental Medicine, No. 5. MacKeith Press: LondonHeinrichs, R. W., (2001) In Search of Madness: Schizophrenia and Neuroscience. p 16.: Oxford University Press, Incorporated: Cary, NC, USA

Kanner, L., (1943) 'Autistic disturbance of affective contact'. Nervous Child, 2 pp. 217-250.

Kraepelin, E., (1881) -Ueber den Einfluss acuter Krankheiten auf die Entstehung von Geisteskrankheiten. Arch Psychiat Nervenkr 1881; 11 pp 137-183, 295-350, 649-677 sowieter 1882; 12 pp 65-121, 287

Image taken fromYoong, P & Pauleen, D. (2004) "Generating and analysing data for applied research on emerging technologies: a grounded action learning approach."   Information Research, 9(4) paper 195 http://InformationR.net/ir/9-4/paper195.html

Glaser, B. G., (1967)Strauss A. Discovery of Grounded Theory. Strategies for Qualitative Research. Sociology Press: Mill Valley, CA

Glaser, B. G., (1978), Theoretical Sensitivity: Advances in the Methodology of Grounded Theory, Sociology Press: Mill Valley, CA

Glaser, B., (1998), Doing Grounded Theory: Issues and Discussion, Sociology Press, Mill Valley, CA,

Hamzah, B. A., (2006) Varsity ranking a big business The Star, Saturday October 14, 2006 http://miscpage.blogsome.com/2006/10/15/varsity-ranking-a-big-business/ accessed 10/02/2008.

Harnad, S. (1996) Implementing Peer Review on the Net: Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals. In: Peek, R. & Newby, G. (Eds.) Scholarly Publication: The Electronic Frontier. Pp. 103-108 MIT Press: Cambridge MA.

Latour, B (1987) Science in action : how to follow scientists and engineers through Society, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass

Lyotard, J., (1979). La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir. Minuit: Paris

Turner, J H., Beeghley, L., Powers, C. H. (1989) The emergence of sociological theory 2nd ed. Dorsey Press: Chicago

Grounded theory vs Academic bias

How the model of autism determines the focus

The cognitivist school of Criticism

Carroll, N., (1996) Theorizing The Moving Image.: Cambridge University Press:New York

Currie, G., (1995) Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Sample results from initial recruiting questionnaire

Cognitive science and video What is required to interpret video ?

The need for a Cognitive model of what goes on. Some suggestions:

• facial recognition and speech interpretation• social dynamics• background from foreground• interpretation of objects into "mise en scene"• diachronics• recognition from cut to cut• recognition of change and permanence• suspension of disbelief theatrical narrative nature of video • do we see real world or see it as contained? window or animated story book• what is ability to detect motion? how do we interpret the stills as motion

Schematic representations of visual processing

Exner’s pioneering diagram of a neural networkExner, S., (1894) Entwurf zu einer physiologischen Erklärung der psychischen Erscheinungen. Leipzig: Engelmann

A neuromorphic analogue of visual processing.Copyright © 2002-2004 by the University of Southern California, iLab and Prof. Laurent Itti.

http://ilab.usc.edu/toolkit/overview.shtml

Sundry references

Bishop, D. F., McDonald, D., Bird, S (2008) Why do language and literacy problems co-occur in children? Evaluation of a multiple overlapping risk factors (MORF) model (under review)

Barton, M., Volkmar, F (1998) How Commonly Are Known Medical Conditions Associated with Autism? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders Volume 28, Number 4 pp. 273-278

Hameroff, S.R., and Penrose, R., (1996) Orchestrated reduction of quantum coherence in brain microtubules: A model for consciousness. In: Toward a Science of Consciousness The First Tucson Discussions and Debates, S.R. Hameroff, A. Kaszniak and A.C. Scott (eds.), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Also published in Mathematics and Computers in Simulation 40:453 480.

Leyfer, O., Folstein, S., Bacalman, s., Davis, N., Dinh, E. Morgan, J., Tager-Flusberg, H., Lainhart., (2006) Comorbid Psychiatric Disorders in Children with Autism: Interview Development and Rates of Disorders. J Autism Dev Disord. 2006 Jul 15

Rutter, M., et al (1994)  Autism and known medical conditions: myth and substance. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 35(2), pp. 311-322.

Ronald, A., Simonoff, E., Kuntsi, J., Ascherson, P., Plomin, R. (2008) Journal of Child Psychology and PsychiatryVolume 49 Issue 5, Pages 535 - 542

Spence, S., Lord., C., p11 in Moldin, S. O., & Rubenstein, J. L. R., ed (2006) Understanding Autism: From Basic Neuroscience to Treatment Taylor & Francis: Boca Raton, Florida

Ceci n’est pas mon dissertation

as a punchy take-home message. Without wishing to be unkind to colleagues in the field (or perhaps wishing to be unkind to those who often misinterpret their ideas), the message is probably that we are sometimes too quick to generate quick snappy messages and that we are often too uncritical of the work we ourselves do. Autism spectrum disorder is now known to be a set of conditions that should not be reduced to a simple dichotomy of presence and absence. When present the conditions are multidimensional and complex, and although they share the common characteristics of social impairment and repetitive behaviours (at least from the perspective of a typically developed person) they often exhibit additional features that are not necessarily defining features of the spectrum. Such complexity requires a more subtle explanation than a simple reduction to an absent theory of mind, a failure of affective appreciation, diminished sense of self of fragmented perception. The complexity of ASD requires us to take a more distanced view and to go beyond simply trying to find new ways of describing the fact that people with ASD are autistic Science is about the reduction of complexity to simpler sets of entities and processes that interact in ways that are controlled descriptions of the behavioural manifestations of ASD. The challenge that faces us now is to step outside our own narrow conception of the issue and to work out how they fit together and why."

Bowler, D., (2007) Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Psychological Theory and Research Chichester: Wiley

Bowler, D. M., (2001) Autism: Specific Cognitive Deficit or Emergent End Point of Multiple Interacting Systems? In Burack J A C Charman T  Yirmiya N Zelazo P ed. (2001) The Development of Autism Perspectives From Theory and Research Lawrence Erlbaum Marwah NJ

"The speculations in the last paragraph bring us back to the question of what it must be like to be autistic (See Frith and Happe 1999). Ultimately, the psychology of ASD must provide an answer to this question. But it must also provide an explanation. Readers who have made it this far (as well as those who have skipped straight to here) may be expecting such descriptions and explanations as well