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Co-Space: A Tangible System Supporting Social Attention and Social Behavioral Development through Embodied Play for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Published: 19 June 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Early impairments in social attention prevent children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) from acquiring social information and disrupt their social behavior development. We present Co-Space, a tangible system that supports children with ASD aged 4-8 years in developing social attention and social behaviors through collaborative and embodied play in a classroom setting. Children can paint tangible hemispheres, insert them on a projection board, and then press or rotate the hemispheres independently or collaboratively to view dynamic audiovisual feedback. We leveraged the strengths of children with ASD (e.g., who may have visual strengths and prefer repetitive actions) by providing them with tangible hemispheres to engage their participation. We utilized codependent design and dynamic audiovisual cues to facilitate children’s social attention and encourage their collaboration and potential social behaviors. We demonstrated multiple ways to integrate the tangible system into classroom activities. We discuss the benefits of designing tangible systems for supporting social attention and social behaviors for children with ASD through play in the classroom.

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References

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Participatory Design of an Embodied Mixed Reality Experience Aimed to Assessing Individual and Collaborative Behaviors of ChildrenProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36770938:CHI PLAY(1-27)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Autistic Expression Beyond the Verbal - Studying Minimally-Verbal Autistic Indian Children's Embodied Interactions with Screen-Based TechnologyProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3655792(612-624)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Understanding Neurodiverse Social Play Between Autistic and Non-Autistic ChildrenProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642809(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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  1. Co-Space: A Tangible System Supporting Social Attention and Social Behavioral Development through Embodied Play for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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    IDC '23: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference
    June 2023
    824 pages
    ISBN:9798400701313
    DOI:10.1145/3585088
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Publication History

    Published: 19 June 2023

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    Author Tags

    1. Children with ASD
    2. Classroom
    3. Embodied Play
    4. Social Attention
    5. Social Behaviors
    6. Tangible User Interface (TUI)

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    • Extended-abstract
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    • Refereed limited

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    IDC '23: Interaction Design and Children
    June 19 - 23, 2023
    IL, Chicago, USA

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

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    IDC '25
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    June 23 - 26, 2025
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    View all
    • (2024)Participatory Design of an Embodied Mixed Reality Experience Aimed to Assessing Individual and Collaborative Behaviors of ChildrenProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36770938:CHI PLAY(1-27)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
    • (2024)Autistic Expression Beyond the Verbal - Studying Minimally-Verbal Autistic Indian Children's Embodied Interactions with Screen-Based TechnologyProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3655792(612-624)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
    • (2024)Understanding Neurodiverse Social Play Between Autistic and Non-Autistic ChildrenProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642809(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2023)Exploring Feedback Modality Designs to Improve Young Children's Collaborative ActionsProceedings of the 25th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction10.1145/3577190.3614140(271-281)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2023

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