Elijah Williams browsing available laptops and specifications for FaceSay functionality.
Author: Elijah Williams | Major: Communication Sciences and Disorders | Semester: Fall 2023
BLURB: Elijah Williams is an Honors college student majoring in Communication Sciences and Disorders in the College of Education and Health Professions. His honors mentor Dr. Frazier is an associate professor of the Department of Communication Disorders and Occupational Therapy. During the fall semester of 2023, Elijah Williams and Dr. Frazier received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), selected sites for data collection procedures, recruited participants, and gathered materials for assessing the social skills of male and female children with autism spectrum disorder before and after engaging with a social skills computer program. Over the next two semesters, they plan to gather and assess their data and publish their results.
BODY OF POST: My name is Elijah Williams, and I am majoring in Communication Sciences and Disorders. Throughout the fall semester of 2023 during my senior year, I worked with my honors mentor Dr. Frazier to apply for approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), select sites for data collection, and recruit participants for the spring semester of 2024, when we will compare the efficacy of the FaceSay computer application for improving social skills between male and female children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). FaceSay is a software with which children and adolescents with ASD can complete tasks that teach social skills relating to facial expressions. These games include “Amazing Gazing,” in which users click on the object that an animated character is looking at; “Follow the Leader,” in which users identify and later create various facial expressions depicted by animated characters on the screen; and “Bandaid Clinic,” in which users place bandaids on faces presenting with various fictitious ailments affecting particular sections of the face.
During this research, ten participants aged 6–13 will use the FaceSay program for three 15–20-minute sessions per week for six weeks, totaling eighteen sessions. Before and after engaging with the FaceSay program, participants will be evaluated using the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS) Rating Scales, enabling a comparison of social skills both between and within male and female participant groups. This project could inspire additional research regarding software applications for intervention or the differences in presentation between males and females with ASD. Additionally, this research could affect future software development for this population.
Late in the spring semester of 2022, I met with Dr. Frazier to discuss honors research due to my interest in ASD. We worked to specify my research project, incorporating my interest in the application of software to intervention and the intriguing, little-reported differences of presentation between males and females with ASD. She agreed to be my honors mentor and has explained and guided me through myriad aspects of research while providing honest, constructive feedback on my work. In our work developing this research project, I learned more about previous research concerning ASD. For example, I discovered that the imbalance of males and females with ASD could result in methodological problems—particularly in participant ratios of males to females.
Over the course of my fall semester of 2023, I encountered several hurdles to the progression of my research. The first of these hurdles was in receiving approval from the IRB, which took far longer than both my honors mentor and I expected. Accompanying this, communication difficulties over email further delayed our ability to recruit participants and establish a site for data collection. Thanks to the assistance of Dr. Frazier and Mrs. Cynthia Watson—another member of my honors committee—we received approval from the IRB and from our site of data collection. Further, Mrs. Watson has been instrumental in participant recruitment despite difficulties in scheduling.
For the spring semester of 2024, I plan to continue research by gathering and comparing data from participant engagement with FaceSay. These results will be recorded in my honors thesis. Beyond my undergraduate education, I hope to incorporate what I have learned about populations with ASD and options for computer interventions into my future career as a speech language pathologist.