Digitally mediated social stories perform on par with traditional means of delivery in teaching social norms to adolescents with ASD

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of digitally mediated social stories (SS) compared with standard SS in teaching social norms in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). All the SS used in this study addressed social norms in initiating and maintaining friendship and covered subjects such as how to listen to your friends, how to be a good friend and how to behave when you lose a game. Design/methodology/approach The participants from this study were three adolescents with ASD, between the ages of 10 and 12, who are attending schools in inclusive settings. To investigate the effect of different ways of delivering SS intervention (printed book or via mobile phone), the authors choose a single-case subject experiment alternating treatment design. Findings All participants showed great improvements in their comprehension of the social norms involved in maintaining friendships from baseline to intervention phases. However, the authors did not find any significant differences between the two phases of the intervention, SS delivered in a standard way and SS delivered using a mobile phone. Originality/value The study results demonstrate that SS delivered on a common and low-cost device are on par with the standard format, thus opening new avenues for increasing the availability of interventions. Future studies should investigate if the use of interactive features, cartoon animations or 3D interactive content, such as avatars or digital agents, can improve the effectiveness of SS while keeping the same psychological content.