The Feasibility of Telepractice Intervention using Animated Illustrations for Remediating Prepositions: A Pilot Study

This study explored the feasibility of telepractice intervention for treating prepositions using animated illustrations. Since telepractice service delivery models have become more popular during the pandemic, the benefit of various therapeutic materials needs to be evaluated. While animated illustration has been used in diverse educational areas, its benefits have not been investigated within telepractice service delivery models for speechlanguage intervention. Four 6-year-old English-speaking children who had difficulty in using prepositions participated in this study. Two children were diagnosed with developmental language disorders whereas the other two children were diagnosed with hearing loss. All children received a 30-minute language therapy session via telepractice twice a week for six weeks. Intervention materials were made either using animated or static illustrations. Two children (one from each diagnosis) received language therapy using animated pictures; the other two children received the same language therapy using static images. All children improved their use of prepositions during the post-tests compared to their pre-tests. Qualitative analysis indicated that the children who received language therapy using animated illustration performed similarly to children who learned with static images. The current study was conducted with only four children. Future studies should replicate the current study with a larger number of participants to evaluate the effect of animated illustrations in treating prepositions for children with language disorders.

Keywords: Telepractice; Intervention; Preposition; Animation; Hearing impairment; Developmental language disorder