Research Team: LouAnne Boyd, Kathryn Ringland, Oliver Haimson, Helen Fernandez, Maria Bistarkey, Gillian R. Hayes
We observed the social play in pairs of children with autism spectrum disorder across 2 conditions: log play sets and Zody iPad game. In the Zody iPad condition, we found 3 different types of social relationships were supported through the variety of cooperative gestures built ion the game. We describe the types of relationship behaviors as: membership, partnership, and friendship. We encourage game designers to consider the spectrum of social behavior that can be supported through games aimed at collaboration.
Boyd, L. E., Ringland, K. E., Haimson, O. L., Fernandez, H., Bistarkey, M., & Hayes, G. R. (2015). Evaluating a Collaborative iPad Game’s Impact on Social Relationships for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, 7(1), 1–18. http://doi.org/10.1145/2751564
