Using Storytelling to Develop Context in Social Interaction for Children with Autism

Abstract

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been identified with the deficit or dissimilarity regarding their way of social interaction which commonly requires training to increase their social competency. The matter of students with ASD exhibiting social interaction impairment should not be fixated solely on the student's interaction itself. Context blindness is a matter worth paying attention to whenever the topic is related to the social interaction of individuals with ASD. Context takes place within the brain, and functions to produce and interpret meaning revolving all internal and external stimuli, which directly affects any activity of an individual that is controlled by the brain, including social interaction. It is noted that the essential of context awareness in most cognitive activities are impacted in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially context in terms of social interaction including emotional behaviour, language and attention fixation and interpretation. In order to build competency of social interaction in students with ASD, the focus on the context in social interaction is a crucial milestone and research focus. On the other hand, since history, storytelling claims to play effective and positive impacts relating to working with comprehension, expression, perception, language, speech rules, creativity, and so on, which is believed to fall under the scope of context in social interaction. This research seeks to examine the role of storytelling in helping children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to learn and cope with context blindness utilising storytelling as a tool to develop context for children with ASD. Findings show that students with ASD exhibit context blindness, hence concluded storytelling is a useful tool to help students with ASD to develop context regarding social interaction.