Study: A huggable communication medium can provide sustained listening support for

special needs students in a classroom (Nakanishi, Sumioka, & Ishiguro, 2017)

Problem Poor listening ability for students who have developmental disabilities
Hypothesis 1. Huggable communication medium improves memory of the
listened information for special needs students
2. First hypothesis continues if huggable medium is used over a long
period of time
Research This took place in Kyoto, Japan, from November 2014 to February 2015.
(background info)
Hugvies (the huggable communication medium) was introduced into
morning meetings at first. Students were able to access Hugvies as long
as they remained inside the classroom.
Experiment There is a speaker embedded into the “head” of the doll, which the
students listen to.
 Results - Teachers noted that students who were “using Hugvies appeared
to be calmer than usual” (Nakanishi, Sumioka, & Ishiguro, 2017).
- Students also made “huge efforts while listening through Hugvies”
(Nakanishi, Sumioka, & Ishiguro, 2017).
- Memory performance was better with Hugvies than direct telling.
- Distracted students with emotional problems made larger
improvements
- Student showed the possibility of supporting the classroom listening
of distracted special needs students for daily listening in the
classroom

I thought this study was quite interesting. At first, I thought the huggable medium would just be
a giant stuffie. Turns out it was a stuffie with a speaker attached to it so that students can more
easily listen to what the teacher is saying. I’m not too sure how well it would work in a classroom
of 28 students as the study had less than 10.

Bibliography
Nakanishi, J., Sumioka, H., & Ishiguro, H. (2017). A huggable communication medicum can
prvide sustained listening support for special needs students in a classroom. Elsevier,
106-113.