Crafting a Process to Scale up Verbal Communication Training for Children with Autism Using TRIZ Methodology

EasyChair Preprint no. 3090

Abstract

“To measure the success of our societies, we should examine how well those with different abilities, including persons with autism, are integrated as full and valued members.” -Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon Autism is an intricate neurobehavioral condition that comprises impairments in social interaction and communication skills along with rigid, repetitive behaviors. This condition is often referred to as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) since it is not one condition but often a range of symptoms, Most children with autism, encounter difficulties in verbal communication. To stay included in the society, communication plays a vital role. Being able to communicate efficiently is a very significant life skill. Without being able to express themselves, children with autism face a lot of challenges in leading a normal life in the society. Major issues they face while communicating are lack of vocabulary and inability to construct sentences. They also struggle to understand the application of the same word for different purpose. Current intervention techniques to improve verbal communication mainly includes two methodologies – Classical Learning and Reinforcement based Learning. A combination of both of these techniques make a very effective training for Autistic children. However, the process is very slow and given the short time a special educator gets to train a child every day, it may take up to 14 days for a child to learn one new verb and few nouns, pronouns and prepositions associated to the new verb. We applied a structured innovation methodology – TRIZ to identify the key disadvantage of the current training process and then resolved contradictions that were created while trying to solve the disadvantages. The result is a highly engaging technology-based training program where not only we will be able to scale up the process of verbal communication training but can also ensure that kids learn other key skills at a much faster rate.

Keyphrases: Autism, Autism Spectrum Disorder, communication training, inventive principle, Root Cause Analysis, special education, special educator, Systematic Innovation, Technology, TRIZ, TRIZ methodology, verbal communication

@Booklet{EasyChair:3090,
  author = {Saheli Mukherjee Debnath and Sayantan Mukherjee},
  title = {Crafting a Process to Scale up Verbal Communication Training for Children with Autism Using TRIZ Methodology},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 3090},

  year = {EasyChair, 2020}}