Autisdata: Software to Help the Development of People with ASD

based on TEACCH and PECS Methodologies

Mariane Sotero Oliveira

, Claudia Pinto Pereira

, Kayo Costa de Santana

and Kelly Oliveira Campos Rossinholli

Department of Exact Sciences, State University of Feira de Santana, Av. Transnordestina, Feira de Santana, Brazil

Professor Maria José Dantas Carneiro Municipal School, St. Ribeirão Preto, Feira de Santana, Brazil

Keywords: Autism, Special Education, Teaching Methodology, Assistive Technology, Educational Software.

Abstract: Through years, teaching and learning techniques have been studied a lot, trying to find better ways to make it

more effective for people. Even with many studies, it is necessary to rethink a lot of our recent used

methodologies, trying to make the educational process more accessible and inclusive. In this paper, we will

present Autisdata, a mobile application solution developed to help children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

to improve their cognitive and communicative skills, based on TEACCH and PECS methodologies, which

are already used to help these people.

1 INTRODUCTION

Recent studies from the World Health Organization

(WHO) point that 1 in every 160 children has Autism

Spectrum Disorders (ASD). WHO defines ASD as a

“range of conditions characterized by some degree of

impaired social behavior, communication, and

language”, beginning in the childhood and tending to

persist through adulthood (WHO, 2017).

Furthermore, WHO also shows that people with

ASD are commonly subject to discrimination and

human rights violations, without supporting and

accessible environments to perform their daily

activities. Sometimes, they are deprived of health,

education, and opportunities to engage and improve

their social skills.

Nowadays, Information and Communications

Technology (ICT) has been widely used to broadcast

information and knowledge. These technologies

provide different channels and ways of

communication, which contribute to ensuring digital

accessibility on access to information. Some

resources used on TV channels and devices to assist

people with visual or hearing impairment are video

and audio description, high contrast, visual sign

language and subtitles (ITU, 2011), as well as visual

and interactive approach improves ASD children to

learn better than traditional method (Kamaruzaman,

et al., 2016).

Man is first and foremost, a being who establishes

relationships. This is confirmed in early childhood,

where since he was little he seeks to make friends,

gather people around him and share moments and

experiences, developing their skills.

The educational process is one of the keys to

achieve personal development, improving people’s

affective, social and cognitive structure. This reality

to a child who has communication and interaction

deficit needs to be different, applying different

methodologies trying to stimulate them to engage in

the learning process (Oliveira, 2018).

In order to help people with ASD on the

educational process, a few methodologies bring more

effective ways to guarantee their communication and

development, helping them to evolve citizenship and

to engage with other people.

Treatment and Education of Autistic and

Communication related handicapped Children

(TEACCH) and Picture Exchange Communication

System (PECS) are examples of methodologies used

to educate these people.

TEACCH is a learning technique to children with

ASD or difficulties to communicate based on

elements such as different environments, climate, and

objects, using activities to develop social behavior,

cognitive and psychological skills (Kalyva and

Avramids, 2005). On the other hand, PECS is a

method, which improves visual communication

where images are used to express needs and desires

Oliveira, M., Pereira, C., Costa de Santana, K. and Rossinholli, K.

Autisdata: Software to Help the Development of People with ASD based on TEACCH and PECS Methodologies.

DOI: 10.5220/0007716303310338

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2019), pages 331-338

ISBN: 978-989-758-367-4

331

even without speech, developing social interactions

and communication skills (Bondy and Frost, 2011).

This paper presents Autisdata, a software solution

guided on TEACCH and PECS methodologies

helping not only people with ASD but also parents

and teachers. The software application allows users to

handle activities, modulate tasks and show how each

one of them can be performed.

2 AUTISM SPECTRUM

DISORDERS (ASD)

This section presents concepts about ASD in order to

legitimate the importance of teaching approaches

appropriate for students with ASD as well as to detail

its practicals and strategies.

The term autism originates from the Greek

“autos”, which means “self, one's own”. It was first

used by the Swiss psychiatrist E. Bleuler, 1911, who

sought to describe the escape from reality and the

internal withdrawal of patients with schizophrenia.

Autism comprises the observation of a set of

behaviors grouped into the main triad:

communication impairments, difficulties in social

interaction, and restricted-repetitive activities

(Cunha, 2011).

Autism can be also considered as a developmental

disorder characterized by a peculiar behavioral

framework that involves fields related to social

interaction, communication, and behavior varying in

degrees of severity (Assumpção and Pimentel, 2000).

Therefore, to achieve a diagnosis of autism, there

must be symptoms in these three domains.

Early diagnosis is relevant to start specialized

education process as soon as possible. The diagnosis

of children with autism is increasing, so, knowing

how to teach these children and which strategies to

use is extremely important. Teaching approaches that

are effective for all students can also be used in

implementing education programmes for students

with ASD, but facing the difficulties in develop

communication and social interactions, it is

appropriate to encourage some way alternative

teaching strategy (Oliveira, 2018).

2.1 Teaching Approaches for ASD

Children

In the face of the difficulties faced by people with

ASD to develop their communication and social

interactions, it is appropriate to encourage some form

of alternative communication. The choice of which

technique to use depends greatly on the child's skills

and limitations, as well as the degree of commitment

of the child and theirs responsible. This work deals

with two systems of teaching, both characterized by

their simplicity in not demanding elaborate skills, in

relation to linguistics, comprehension or memory.

Cunha (2011) relates that even without a

unanimous approach, there are appropriated

techniques for dealing with autism, due to different

symptoms and factors that interfere in the natural

development. Some behavior interventions have been

effective on autism treatment, such as TEACCH and

PECS methods.

2.2.1 TEACCH

The TEACCH teaching methodology is, by

definition, a Treatment and Education of Autistic and

related Communication Handicapped Children

developed at North Carolina, United States, in the

1970s (Panerai et al., 2009). Starting from the premise

that people with autism are predominantly visual

learners (Mesibov et al., 2004), TEACCH was

designed specifically for children with autism, which

it can (and should) be used in a collaboration between

parents and professionals. The TEACHH system was

originally designed for children with Autism.

However, it can be used with children with a range of

needs.

TEACCH demonstrates the importance of

environmental organization (Bosa, 2006), without

distractions for the child, the use of visual cues, and

the individualized evaluation. In order to set up a

structured teaching and learning environment, it is

necessary to be physically organized with a specific

and predetermined place for the child to perform a

certain activity, in this way he/she already knows the

exact place where they should work.

TEACCH is a strategy worried about to develop

schedules and work system with visual times that

show the student the order of the activities and when

they will do it, besides exposing the quantity to be

fulfilled; and the modeling of activities, visually

describing step-by-step of each task.

2.1.2 PECS

Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is

a visual communication method that stimulates verbal

communication, whose children and adults can make

requests and comments, engage with others, and build

communication skills such as vocabulary, syntax,

receptive and expressive language (Bondy and Frost,

2011).

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PECS technique works as a framework with

different steps. Each step corresponds to a phase.

There are six phases, which go on to teach

discrimination of pictures until how to put them

together in order to create simple sentences. In the

more advanced phases, individuals are taught to use

modifiers, answer questions and comments (PEC,

2011).

The first phase consists of introducing the

exchange picture technique as a way of

communication between the children and his/her

“communicative partner”. The child shows a picture

to his/her communicative partner and receives back

items or activities they want.

The second phase is the distance and persistence

strategy. It aims to stimulate children to be more

persistent communicators by using pictures of the

items or activities across different distances, people

and/or environments.

Third, children will develop picture

discrimination selecting his/her favorite thing from a

group of pictures. Afterward, they will place the

picture in the PECS communication book - a ringed

binder with self-adhesive hook fastener strips where

pictures are stored and easily removed for

communication (Bondy and Frost, 2011).

Fourth, fifth and sixth phases are related to

creating sentences starting with simple sentences as

“I want…” and then expanding it by adding

adjectives, verbs, and prepositions. Finally,

individuals will be able to answer questions and make

comments.

2.2 Related Works

There are some works related to the teaching process

of special children. Most of them intend to prove the

effectiveness of specific teaching approaches for

ASD children.

CharlopChristy et al. (2002), in their paper

“Using the picture exchange communication system

with children with autism: Assessment of PECS

acquisition, speech, social-communicative behavior,

and problem behavior”, report that the results of their

study which provides empirical evidence and adds

experimental data to support the use of PECS,

indicate that children’s social communicative

behaviors increased after learning to use PECS. It also

indicates the increased communication skills

occurred in conjunction with decreases in problem

behaviors.

On the other hand, D’Elia et al. (2014) conducted

a longitudinal study of 30 preschool children with

ASD to evaluate the potential benefits of

TEACCH. Findings suggest that a low-intensity

home and school TEACCH program may provide

benefits for children with ASD by reducing autistic

symptoms and maladaptive behaviors.

Many researches were made regarding human-

computer interaction (HCI) for children with autism.

Mangafa et al. (2015) explored primary school

teachers’ experiences of developing joint attention

skills in children with autism using strategies and

iPads. The observations showed that teachers used a

variety of evidence-based strategies to engage their

pupils with autism in joint attention opportunities but

that there was little use of iPads.

Kamaruzaman et al. (2016) developed an

application to be used by parents and special

educators to teach basic numeracy and calculation

skills to children with autism, which complements the

traditional method such as cue cards and flash cards

that are implemented over a touchscreen device.

Therefore, beyond researches about teaching

techniques and their results in ASD children, it is

possible and promising to promote future

independence and self-determination in the education

of these children (Kamaruzaman et al., 2016).

Every aspect that may contribute to the teaching

and learning process of ASD children was taken into

considerations in developing the software presented

in this paper, such as the study of ASD teaching and

learning techniques and examples of softwares that

were developed aiming to help in their education.

3 METHODOLOGY

This section presents the steps and tools used to

develop Autisdata. Figure 1 reveals how the propose

was created since its conception until its last release.

Autisdata’s propose begins with studies to

recognize how informatics can be used to improve on

quality education, searching for Information and

Communication Technologies, Learning Objects and

special education.

After these researches, it was possible to realize

that, even existing amounts of people who need some

special attention, there is a lack of tools helping to

include them in an educational process. Then, among

studies about autism, the questions about how can

technological knowledge help people with ASD

begin to be answered, using all of these theoretical

bases. After gathering all these pieces of information,

was possible to proceed in the software development

stage.

Autisdata: Software to Help the Development of People with ASD based on TEACCH and PECS Methodologies

333

Figure 1: Autisdata’s development methodology.

According to Sommerville (2007), software

development is a sequence of activities that are used

to build a software. Sommerville (2007) also says that

four core activities are imprescindible on software

development regardless of the software process used,

such as specification, development, validation, and

evolution.

These activities are connected with the software

methodology used in Figure 1. With requirements

gathering, software modeling and graphic interface

were possible to specify the software, while the

implementation step represents the process of

development. Finally, with software tests and user

experiences was possible to validate Autisdata. In the

following subsections will be described each one of

these activities.

Sommerville (2007) introduces that software

validation intends not only to show if it is

appropriated according to its specifications but also,

according to the user’s expectations.

The software developed needed to be constantly

tested by its team, to ensure the accuracy on its

operation. Always when a new functionality was

finished, a test routine was performed to realize if the

functionality was working as planned and if it was

working integrated with the rest of the system.

Finally, when all requirements and use cases were

developed, Autisdata was released to their final users.

To validate Autisdata, the tool was presented to

professionals and people with experience in special

education that works on a specialized place for people

with autism spectrum located in Feira de Santana in

Brazil.

Using qualitative research, through interviews

and questionnaires was possible to validate Autisdata

from the user’s point of view.

4 AUTISDATA: SOFTWARE

OPERATION

Beyond the lack of social interaction and

communication with ASD children, it is very

important to choose the appropriate teaching

technique, which will develop their skills and work

on their limitations. This paper reaches two

educational systems featured by its methodologies

related to communication and behavior.

Autisdata was developed gathering PECS and

TEACCH strategies, for that, the software was

divided into two modules, the first screen of the

software is just two buttons, each one directs to a

specific module (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Autisdata - First screen.

The following sections explain how the software

was developed in order to support and improve the

learning process of an ASD student.

4.1 Module One: PECS

Module one, also known as Module PECS, named

after the teaching methodology PECS, aims to teach

functional communication.

Children and young people on the autism

spectrum often do not develop social and

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communication skills in the same way as their peers.

Similar to the handmade communication book, this

approach leads ASD children to independent

communication by automatizing their functions and

giving to both children and teachers, the opportunity

to have another tool of communication easily in

hands.

Combining the PECS phases, Autisdata contents

three phases adapted to a software environment. It

works as a picture database, where users can add new

pictures, delete or edit it. The pictures are presented

in categories: food, beverage, activities, and objects.

Therefore, it starts practicing the picture

discrimination feature among the user of the software.

The first interaction inside PECS module is the

discrimination of the pictures where the user needs to

choose in which category is the item that he/she wants

to. The pictures were first divided into categories in

order to organize and to facilitate the search. Then,

after deciding the category, by clicking on the picture

related to it, it will appear another screen with the

pictures of that category. This screen simulates the

communication book using the same design of the

strips where pictures are stored (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Autisdata - First screen.

There are some pictures natives from Autisdata;

these pictures are from Soy Visual (Fundación

Orange, 2002), a website which allows the use of all

images in its collection, beyond citation of the source.

However, the user can add new pictures according to

the children interests. They can also delete or edit the

pictures in the system.

The user will continue to practice the

discrimination of pictures, but now they are in the

same group of content. In this phase, after the user

touches the picture wanted, it will move directly to

the strip on the top of the page, against the fixed

sentence “I want” (Figure 4).

Figure 4: PECS Module - Categories screen.

In the second phase, the user needs to select the

picture, then hold, and drop the picture in the right

position in the strip and next to the pre-fixed sentence.

This strategy simulates the distance and persistence

real technique has.

The third phase intends to stimulate the user to

create simple sentences and place them in the right

order, so there are no pre-fixed sentences on the top

of the page, now the user needs to place all the

sentences, and also the picture wanted in the black

strip.

4.2 Module Two: TEACCH

This module is based on the TEACCH technique,

which aims to create the best environment for the

learning process of ASD children. For these children

is difficult to make transitions between activities and

Autisdata: Software to Help the Development of People with ASD based on TEACCH and PECS Methodologies

335

places without schedules. The strategy used in

TEACCH to reduce this dilemma is named by

Mesibov et al. (2004) as physical and visual

structures, schedules, work systems, and task

organization.

The features presented in this module were

developed thinking of the user as the teacher because

its functions are related to creating schedules and

diary activities for ASD students.

So, basically, the user creates activities and then

sets a schedule with the number of activities he/she

thinks is necessary for the student. Each activity is

based on the needs of the students and it is required

the existence of pictures and description with the

instructions of the activity. Besides the action, in

order to create a schedule for the routine of the

student, it is necessary to set a name for it.

The student will use the same interface to

visualize his/her routine and activities of the day. As

long as they are finishing one activity, they can mark

in the software by clicking on the “Done” button.

Therefore, by the end of the routine, the student can

follow his/her development and conclusion of

activities. The Figure 5 illustrates this module.

Figure 5: TEACCH activity.

5 VALIDATION

According to Sommerville (2007), software

validation, also known as verification and validation

(V & V), intends to show software is built based on

its specifications while it satisfies the customer's

specifications about the system. Therefore, it is very

important to conclude the software validation to be

sure that it is worth and if it will please their users.

This section shows how was the V&V process of

Autisdata since the study of the possible natural

environment of occurrence of this phenomenon and

the analysis of the material collected including its

results.

After the study of teaching methodologies in the

cognitive, communicative and social development of

autistic children (TEACCH and PECS), plus

automating its manual tools, the objective of this

research was to compare how the educators of ASD

children deal with their students nowadays, and what

would change if they start using Autisdata? This

research also aims to test the prototype of the

application, considering its ease of use and

understanding by educators, and also the similarity

with the manual tools, utility and possible

improvements and addition of other functions.

There were 9 people joining in the research, they

were professionals who work directly with ASD

children at the Specialized Nucleus for People with

Autism Spectrum (NEPEA - Núcleo Especializado

para Pessoas com Espectro do Autismo), located in

Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil. This research was

carried out in a relatively small group of potential

users of the computational technology presented in

this paper, through a combination of interview and

questionnaire.

The interview worked as an icebreaker and it was

started with an introduction to the software’s purpose

and also some personal questions such as “How long

have you been working with ASD children; “Have

you received special training to work with these

children?”; “How do you plan and/or organize the

activities you do with these children?”.

During the interview, there was also room for the

interviewee to test the tool, handle the application and

also make comments and suggestions about new

features that could help in the use of software in the

daily life of autistic children.

Following, they had to fill in the questionnaire

about Autisdata. The questions were about what did

they think is useful on the software, as well as what

did they think it is necessary to add in.

According to the data collected from the

questionnaire survey, it was verified that at least one

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of the teaching methodologies directed to autistic

children is already known to all interviewees; some

of them already knew about PECS and others about

TEACCH. It was identified as a favorable similarity

to the techniques used in TEACCH and PECS

manually, and all interviewees agree that the software

resembles the manual tools. They also responded

positively in terms of ease, comprehension, and

usability.

The software developed in this project aims to

assist and repair these two main questions related

with ASD, the first one, communication, which is

related to PECS methodology. It was used in the

software aiming to stimulate children’s principles of

conversation, through the exchange of symbols.

The second issue is the child’s concentration,

which can be minimized with the use of Autisdata

software, because it is a technological tool and calls

the child's interest. Children with autism spectrum

disorder have an affinity with tablets and similars,

which is recognized by the autism research

community with many studies gradually emerging in

this field (Mangafa et al, 2015). The results of the

questionnaires and interview report that all the

children who attend the institution are fascinated by

electronic instruments, such as, tablets and cell

phones, and confirmed that, when they are in contact

with these technologies, they focus their attention,

and concentrate only on the device.

Since all the steps of this research were performed

and the problems were identified from the analysis of

the results obtained through the data collected in

questionnaires and interviews, it was possible to carry

out the validation of the software described in this

work.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Education is one of the most important tools on

people’s development, responsible for getting

information and transforming them into beings

capable to contribute to society.

Even with difficulties, all people should be

embraced on this process to evolve their abilities

becoming citizens with an active political, economic

and cultural role.

On this context, this paper presented the first

version of a software tool to help people with Autism

Spectrum Disorders (ASD), to overcome some of the

difficulties in the educational process, helping them

to develop their social and cognitive skills.

The developed tool, Autisdata, in complementing

the traditional methods (PECS and TEACCH) by

supporting the process of teaching and learning for

children with autism, use digital technology to

contribute on accessibility and society's evolution.

However, digital methods may not exist to

completely replace the traditional method but to

complement the existing methods by providing users

with ease of use and mobility.

According to questionnaires and interviews made

with professionals responsible to help these people

show that was possible to concretize Autisdata as a

satisfactory tool, to help people with ASD.

Autisdata can be applied to help children with

ASD in the educational process, reducing their

difficulties of communicating and learning, another

technology to support them daily. Besides, it can be

used to help both teachers and family with the

communication process with ASD children and

organization of tasks for them.

As future works to Austisdata’s development is

expected the implementation of some new

functionalities, such as: (a) audio feedback, helping

children’s development with audio commands; (b)

new categories creation, to educators and helpers

expand the possibilities of Autisdata; (c) the usage of

more than one image to describe each step of a full

routines; and (d) the creation of an administrator user

to help educators sharing information about routines

to different users and/or devices.

We also expect to extend Autisdata’s validation

through researches with other professionals and also

with its target public, analyzing how users will

interact with the tool, and the evolution of their

communication skills through its use.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank the Specialized Nucleus for

People with Autism Spectrum (NEPEA - Núcleo

Especializado para Pessoas com Espectro do

Autismo) and the State University of Feira de Santana

(UEFS - Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana)

for their support to this research project.

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