TY - JOUR
T1 - The Knowledge and Preferences of Parents/Carers of Autistic Children and Young People about Technology Devices
AU - Kouroupa, Athanasia
AU - Irvine, Karen
AU - Mengoni, Silvana E.
AU - Sharma, Shivani
N1 - Copyright © The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
PY - 2024/12/21
Y1 - 2024/12/21
N2 - This study explored parents’/carers’ knowledge, interest, and preferences towards technology devices as support mediums for autistic children, the reasoning behind any choice and the factors associated with the most preferred technology device. Technology devices were conceptualised as smartphones, iPods, tablets, virtual reality, robots, and ‘other’ for participants to list their own further interpretations of technology devices. Survey data were collected from 267 parents/carers of autistic children aged 2–18 years internationally between May to October 2020. Parents/carers of autistic children and young people were aware of, interested in and mostly preferred the use of tablets because of their convenience and ease of use. They least preferred virtual reality followed by robots due to both being overwhelming, cold, inconvenient to transportand expensive. Robots, in particular, were unknown to respondents. The data suggested that some technology devices as a support medium are not widely known to families of autistic children and young people in support programmes. Technology devices need to be financially approachable and achieve a high standard of design to engage users. Future research should focus on gathering evidence from the autistic community about their preferences and views of technology devices as a medium in autism support programmes.
AB - This study explored parents’/carers’ knowledge, interest, and preferences towards technology devices as support mediums for autistic children, the reasoning behind any choice and the factors associated with the most preferred technology device. Technology devices were conceptualised as smartphones, iPods, tablets, virtual reality, robots, and ‘other’ for participants to list their own further interpretations of technology devices. Survey data were collected from 267 parents/carers of autistic children aged 2–18 years internationally between May to October 2020. Parents/carers of autistic children and young people were aware of, interested in and mostly preferred the use of tablets because of their convenience and ease of use. They least preferred virtual reality followed by robots due to both being overwhelming, cold, inconvenient to transportand expensive. Robots, in particular, were unknown to respondents. The data suggested that some technology devices as a support medium are not widely known to families of autistic children and young people in support programmes. Technology devices need to be financially approachable and achieve a high standard of design to engage users. Future research should focus on gathering evidence from the autistic community about their preferences and views of technology devices as a medium in autism support programmes.
UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-024-06678-8
U2 - 10.1007/s10803-024-06678-8
DO - 10.1007/s10803-024-06678-8
M3 - Article
SN - 0162-3257
JO - Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
JF - Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
ER -