New app evaluates and nurtures social communication skills in children aged three to twelve

Researchers at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) are to thank for the development of PleaseApp, an application that aims to evaluate and dynamically assess pragmatic and social communication skills and treat related disorders in children aged 3 to 12 using an attractive, playful and child-friendly environment.

The tool is intended for use by psychologists, speech therapists and other educational psychology specialists who work with children with developmental disorders, especially those facing pragmatic and social communication difficulties. The computer application has been registered and is ready for installation and use by Windows and Mac operating systems, pending a licencing agreement.

The researchers drew on empirical studies and reviews to design the app. Firstly, they explored the milestones that children without disabilities typically reach while developing their pragmatic and social communication skills. Then, they looked into the difficulties faced by children with atypical language development, such as those with a developmental language disorder (DLD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

According to Alfonso Igualada, researcher at the Cognition and Language Research Group (GRECIL), a part of the UOC’s Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, and UJI researchers Clara Andrés and Raquel Flores, "Our innovative method allows us to obtain a specific or dynamic perspective of each child's abilities, thereby providing useful information for planning subsequent interventions that meet their real educational needs".

PleaseApp, which is offered as both a computer application and a webapp, has been tested with children aged  3 to 12 with and without neurodevelopmental disorders. It makes it possible to detect whether children have age-appropriate pragmatic and social communication skills and to specify which particular problems they present on ten different levels: (1) understanding of figurative language; (2) understanding of complex intentions; (3) understanding of humour; (4) learning new words from context; (5) sequencing of communicative situations; (6) conversational meta-pragmatic skills; (7) reference skills; (8) gesture-spoken-context integration; (9) use of polite formulas; and (10) understanding of indirect requests.

The tool enables playful and motivating interventions thanks to such aspects as reward systems and constructive feedback. Each of the ten levels corresponds to a different scenario, and the characters are mostly boys and girls. They use settings that are familiar to schoolchildren, such as school, the zoo, the park or the cinema. At each level, there are instructions for children to help the main character choose the right solution among several options. In addition, children can choose to have the text instructions, dialogues and options read aloud for them.

Educational psychologists can create as many participants and add as much information as they want: code, gender, date of birth, diagnosis, school, educational level, observations, etc. Depending on the therapeutic objective (evaluation, dynamic assessment or treatment), and children’s characteristics (age and abilities), specialists will have to supervise or reinforce use of the application to a greater or lesser extent.

The app has an evaluation route and an intervention route that allow it to be used in its evaluation, dynamic assessment and treatment functions for any of the ten components. Moreover, professionals can obtain a report of participants’ performance in each of the levels they have completed.

In evaluation mode, children's skill level is determined. In dynamic assessment mode, their learning process and potential are assessed, and the necessary aids for improving their skills are provided. Finally, treatment mode allows children to nurture their skills, since the intervention items can be used within an intervention programme comprising different pragmatic components.

^{UOC R&I} 

^{The UOC's research and innovation (R&I) are helping 21st-century global societies to overcome pressing challenges by studying the interactions between ICT and human activity, with a specific focus on e-learning and e-health. Over 400 researchers and 48 research groups work among the University's seven faculties and three research centres: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), the eLearn Center (eLC) and the eHealth Center (eHC).}

^{The United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and open knowledge serve as strategic pillars for the UOC's teaching, research and innovation. More information:research.uoc.edu.}