Supporting Inclusion Using Multimodal Comics: The Power of Comic Experience in Promoting Integrative Inferential Reasoning

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Narrative and Perspectives on Experiences in Special and Inclusive Education

Abstract

Comics can be a tool to combat segregation of Autistic learners into restrictive learning environments such as Special-Day-Class (SDC) Language-Arts due to challenges in narrative meaning-making. Comics have had mixed results as an effective form of support across contexts (Coderre, 2020; Gray, 1994). One factor often not taken into consideration is comic-experience. 130 adolescents (ages 11-17; 18 Autistic and 112 neurotypical) participants were randomly assigned to either a comic or text condition, where they read narratives and answered the inferential reasoning questions. Based on Rasch three-way-latent-regression interaction (Autistic × Multimodal-comic × Self-Rated Comic Experience ) outputs, self-rated comic experience increased the likelihood for Autistic respondents to engage in higher levels of Integrative-Inferential-Reasoning) (Blum et al., 2020) equal to their neurotypical peers.

Authors

• alexander mario blum, Stanford University

• James M Mason, University of California - Berkeley