Readers

Associate professor Anita McAllister, Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology (Karolinska Institutet) and Associate professor Jenny Wilder, Department of Special Education (Stockholm University).

Supervisors 

Professor Helena Hemmingsson, Department of Special Education (Stockholm University), Professor Mats Granlund, CHILD, Swedish Institute of Disability Research, School of Health and Welfare (Jönköping University), and Associate professor Ai-Wen Hwang, Graduate Institute of Early Intervention, College of Medicine (Chang-Gung University, Taiwan).

Moderator 

Professor Helena Hemmingsson, Department of Special Education (Stockholm University)

Research topic/content of thesis

Children and youth with complex needs experience various participation restrictions in daily activities due to the severity of motor impairments and speech difficulties. Research indicates eye-gaze assistive technology (AT) could be a feasible method, enabling them to use their eyes to access and interact with a computer/tablet instead of a standard mouse or keyboard. Therefore, it might create an opportunity for these children to communicate, learn, and participate in varied daily activities by using an eye-gaze controlled computer. 

This doctoral research aims to investigate the impacts of applying eye-gaze AT on daily participation for children and youth with complex needs. The first study examines the impacts of using eye-gaze AT on dyadic communication interaction through video coding analysis. The second study uses multiple baseline design to investigate the preliminary effects of an eye-gaze AT intervention on computer activity repertoire and performance of participation goals in children and youth with complex needs in Taiwan. The third study investigates the feasibility of this eye-gaze AT intervention in Taiwan’s context regarding participant adherence, caregivers’ satisfaction, and stakeholders’ experiences through a mixed method approach.

The PhD study is part of the Research School in Special Education directed towards Early Interventions in Early Childhood Education (Swedish Research Council 2017-03683). Read more about Research School. 

Material for the seminar

Material for the seminar will be distributed two weeks in advance through Stockholm University Box-cloud for employees and in physical copies through research administration at the Department of Special Education. Please contact: forskaradministration@specped.su.se 

The seminar will be exclusively held via Zoom. Link coming soon. 

Contact: Yu-Hsin Hsieh, yu-hsin.hsieh@specped.su.se