 in adulthood .
A particularly important skill for successful adult functioning, to which social communication is central, is the ability to collaborate with others. Collaborative and team-building skills are recognised as vital to future adult employment and participation in society . A number of collaborative activities between children (such as collaborative learning, cooperative learning or peer tutoring) now commonly take place in classrooms and have generally been judged to be beneficial in terms of improved learning (e.g., [22, 23, 24]). Collaborative working has also been shown to improve peer relations and facilitate children’s feelings of belonging [25, 26]. However, group and dyadic work is not invariably beneficial, only collaborations where children are actively engaged and that are characterised by high-quality questioning, explanation, clarification of ideas, discussion and generally positive affect have been found to be productive .
Given their difficulties, it is to be expected that children with social communication impairments will struggle with collaborative group working and recent studies do indeed bear this out. By comparison to typically developing children in collaborative contexts, they can be aggressive or withdrawn , show more irrelevant behaviours and share less , ignore others’ questions and requests and give poorer directions .
Interventions to support pragmatic language and collaborative working are limited. The use of technology and gaming has been highlighted as a positive tool for facilitating communication and collaboration with peers in children with communication difficulties (e.g. [30, 31]). The application of computer technology for collaborative games to support children’s communication has a number of unique advantages over non-technological approaches. Children with social communication impairments are frequently overwhelmed by the complexity and unpredictability of social interaction. Computer games designed for two or more children to play together can be formatted so that they provide a ‘scaffold’ that guides and structures the interaction between children (for a review, see ). Properly designed, use of a computer game can support communication by structuring collaboration between children so that they solve problems within a fun environment together in partnership [33,34,35]. Typically, in collaborative activities, children with social communication disorders either participate very little, lacking the confidence to become involved or, alternatively, may attempt to dominate and run the activity solely according to their own agenda . Managing these behaviours presents a serious challenge for speech and language therapists, teachers and teaching assistants . Technology can be used to regulate turn-taking, ensuring equal participation between all players and preventing exclusion of any children. Furthermore, rule enforcement and reward-giving (such as virtual ‘prizes’) by a computer, rather than an adult, is viewed by children as more consistent, fairer and less arbitrary . The flexibility afforded can also be harnessed to sustain children’s interest and concentration by adding surprises, colourful animations and unusual sounds and keeping the game flowing at a suitable pace [31, 38].
We have developed and carried out initial testing for a computer game intervention which aims to improve pragmatic language skill and the ability to collaborate in children with social communication impairments. Preliminary efficacy testing for ‘E-PLAYS’ (formerly known as the ‘Maze Game’) is described in Murphy et al. [29, 39] on 32 children randomised either to the intervention or to usual school practice. Children who received the computer game intervention showed significant increases on communication test scores, in the use of high-quality questioning and listening skills and in their positive ratings about collaborative work with peers . It is important to note that for these studies, the intervention was delivered to the children by a trained, post-graduate psychology research assistant who