Publisher
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Place of Publication
Chattanooga (Tenn.)
Abstract
ABSTRACT Social Stories are a child-focused intervention designed to fill in the gaps of children' s social understanding with the intention of helping them develop constructive behaviors and coping strategies (Gray, as cited in Adamson et al., 2016). Social stories are used as an intervention for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Leaf et al., 2020). Research on social stories across fields has shown positive outcomes (Chan & O’Reilly, 2008; Scattone et al., 2006) and negative outcomes (Leaf et al., 2015; Kokina & Kern, 2010) throughout the past 20 years. Social story intervention has been found to improve social skills, safety skills, and reduce problem behavior (Guo et al., 2026). Research has also found that social stories in primarily single-subject designs reported positive effects, especially for increasing desired behaviors such as communication, play skills, self-care, emotion identification, executive functioning, and following directions (Como et al., 2024). This research demonstrates that social stories have some positive outcomes, but highlights the need for further research on social stories and their impacts. Further investigation is necessary to explore different settings and groups of people under social stories and what their impacts are. This study aims to investigate the impact of social stories on management students by supporting neurodiverse learners through inclusive business case study designs. Specifically, it examines how social stories can be integrated into business case studies to support learning and engagement. Case studies have been widely recognized as an effective instructional strategy in higher education, with prior research demonstrating their ability to enhance critical thinking skills and promote active learning (Mahdi et al., 2020; Hachtmann, 2016). Expanding upon research on the use of case studies and social stories, this study seeks to explore whether combining these instructional approaches can improve comprehension and social understanding for neurodivergent college students in business courses. Our hypotheses are H1: Integrating social stories into business cases will positively impact management students by increasing their engagement, enhancing their empathy and social awareness, and improving their perceived learning effectiveness. H2: Neurodivergent students who receive social story case studies will report more engagement, increased learning outcomes, and more social self-efficacy. H3: Type of neurodivergence will moderate the effectiveness of social stories, resulting in differing levels of engagement, social awareness, and perceived learning across different neurodivergent subgroups.
Date
November 2026
Subject
Industrial and organizational psychology
Document Type
posters
Language
English
Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Poster
Included in
Supporting Neurodiverse Learners Through Inclusive Business Case Study Design
ABSTRACT Social Stories are a child-focused intervention designed to fill in the gaps of children' s social understanding with the intention of helping them develop constructive behaviors and coping strategies (Gray, as cited in Adamson et al., 2016). Social stories are used as an intervention for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Leaf et al., 2020). Research on social stories across fields has shown positive outcomes (Chan & O’Reilly, 2008; Scattone et al., 2006) and negative outcomes (Leaf et al., 2015; Kokina & Kern, 2010) throughout the past 20 years. Social story intervention has been found to improve social skills, safety skills, and reduce problem behavior (Guo et al., 2026). Research has also found that social stories in primarily single-subject designs reported positive effects, especially for increasing desired behaviors such as communication, play skills, self-care, emotion identification, executive functioning, and following directions (Como et al., 2024). This research demonstrates that social stories have some positive outcomes, but highlights the need for further research on social stories and their impacts. Further investigation is necessary to explore different settings and groups of people under social stories and what their impacts are. This study aims to investigate the impact of social stories on management students by supporting neurodiverse learners through inclusive business case study designs. Specifically, it examines how social stories can be integrated into business case studies to support learning and engagement. Case studies have been widely recognized as an effective instructional strategy in higher education, with prior research demonstrating their ability to enhance critical thinking skills and promote active learning (Mahdi et al., 2020; Hachtmann, 2016). Expanding upon research on the use of case studies and social stories, this study seeks to explore whether combining these instructional approaches can improve comprehension and social understanding for neurodivergent college students in business courses. Our hypotheses are H1: Integrating social stories into business cases will positively impact management students by increasing their engagement, enhancing their empathy and social awareness, and improving their perceived learning effectiveness. H2: Neurodivergent students who receive social story case studies will report more engagement, increased learning outcomes, and more social self-efficacy. H3: Type of neurodivergence will moderate the effectiveness of social stories, resulting in differing levels of engagement, social awareness, and perceived learning across different neurodivergent subgroups.
Department
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Dept. of Psychology