Introduction/Purpose: Preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) had poor emotional terms. This study examined whether the effectiveness of a social story tele-intervention with affective music (SSTI-AM) in enhancing the expression of emotional state terms (EST) among preschoolers with ASD.


Methods: Twenty-eight preschoolers with ASD aged 5-6 years were included and randomly assigned to the experimental group (n = 14, Mage= 6.07 years) and the control group (n = 14, Mage= 5.91 years). All participants had a nonverbal index score of 80 or above on the WPPSI-IV. The SSTI-AM program consisted of four weekly sessions (one session per week), each lasting 50 minutes, during which emotional state terms—happy, sad, angry, and fear—were taught. Only the experimental group listened to corresponding original music excerpts while learning the emotional terms. The Emotional Lexicon Task (ELT) was used to assess expressive emotional vocabulary at four time points: pre-test, pre-intervention, post-intervention, and follow-up post test.


Results: A two-way mixed-design ANOVA was conducted with group and time as factors. A significant group × time interaction was found for EST accuracy, F(3,78) = 4.899, p = .004, ηp2 = .159. Simple main effects analysis showed a significant group effect at the post-intervention time point, F(1, 104) = 4.74, p = .032, ηp2 = .044, with the group receiving affective music scoring higher than the group without music.


Conclusions: The SSTI-AM significantly enhanced the expression of basic emotional state terms in preschoolers with ASD. These findings highlight the potential of SSTI-AM as a distance-friendly and effective approach to enhancing emotional lexicon acquisition in this population.