The Effect of Using an Arabic Assistive Application on Improving the Ability of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder to Comprehend and Answer Content Questions.

Numerous studies suggest that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) encounter language problems related to syntax. In particular, these children face difficulties in comprehending and answering complex language structures in Arabic.This paper examines whether a prototype Arabic assistive application can have an impact on the ability of children with ASD to comprehend and answer content questions and on their communicative skills. Via two questionnaires targeting 57 caregivers and ASD specialists in Jordan and a focus-group discussion with three teachers working in three autism centers in Jordan, a prototype assistive application named Aseel was created. To test the effect of using this app on enhancing ASD children's ability to comprehend and answer Arabic questions, a sample consisting of two groups of children: 20 verbal and 5 nonverbal children with ASD enrolled in three autism centers in Amman, Jordan was recruited. A pre-test containing 55 content questions was designed and tested on the two groups. Then, a treatment for three weeks took place in which the teachers trained the children on answering these questions using the app. A post-test was conducted after a three-day break to test whether the app affected the ability of verbal and nonverbal children with ASD to comprehend and answer the questions accurately. The data analysis revealed that the differences between the answers of the two groups in the pre- and post-tests were statistically significant. This suggests that this technology has the potential to aid both verbal and nonverbal children with ASD in effectively learning complex Arabic content questions. This assistive application enhances collaboration between teacher and children with ASD, visual-spatial thinking and communication with others. Another advantage of this app is increasing ASD children's vocabulary repertoire. Preliminary results involving nonverbal children showed that the icons which visually and auditorily represent the most basic needs for a person are proving effective in helping this group communicate with their caregivers and teachers.

On the Acquisition of the Arabic Grammatical Gender by Arabic-Speaking Children with ASD.

This study examines the ability of Arabic-speaking-children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to acquire the Arabic grammatical gender. It also explores whether the use of visual stimuli can be effective to acquire it. Using the experimental design of a pre- and post-test, 14 children with ASD were tested twice on the same items after a treatment period and their results were compared using a paired sample t-test. The results showed that the use of visual stimuli could be effective in the acquisition of grammatical gender evidenced by the higher accuracy rate on the post-test. The results also demonstrated that the visibility of the feminine suffix marked on the target noun and the participants' familiarity with these nouns contributed to this rate on the post-test. Furthermore, it was shown that even if the noun belonged to a natural gender class, it had no effect on the participants' answers unlike the results reported by previous studies on the acquisition of grammatical gender.

The use of monomodal and multimodal metaphors in advertising Jordanian and American food products on Facebook: A comparative study.

This study investigates the use of monomodal and multimodal metaphors in Jordanian and American advertisements for promoting food products on Facebook. 180 advertisements including monomodal and multimodal metaphors were collected from the Facebook pages of 12 famous restaurants in Jordan and the USA. The analysis shows that monomodal and multimodal metaphors could be used as a persuasive strategy in food advertisements not to facilitate understanding of the target domain since the latter is concrete, but to create imaginative depictions of the advertised product, making it more appealing to consumers. The results show that contextual monomodal metaphors are pervasive in the corpus since they allow advertisers to make their advertisements more memorable and open the door for more engagement by the viewers in interpreting the metaphors. The results also reveal that culture-specific metaphors in food advertisements could be used to show viewers they are an important part of the advertising process.