Designing for interaction immediacy to enhance social skills of children with autism

M Tentori, GR Hayes - Proceedings of the 12th ACM international …, 2010 - dl.acm.org
Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing, 2010dl.acm.org
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder often require therapeutic interventions to support
engagement in effective social interactions. In this paper, we present the results of a study
conducted in three public schools that use an educational and behavioral intervention for
the instruction of social skills in changing situational contexts. The results of this study led to
the concept of interaction immediacy to help children maintain appropriate spatial
boundaries, reply to conversation initiators, disengage appropriately at the end of an …
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder often require therapeutic interventions to support engagement in effective social interactions. In this paper, we present the results of a study conducted in three public schools that use an educational and behavioral intervention for the instruction of social skills in changing situational contexts. The results of this study led to the concept of interaction immediacy to help children maintain appropriate spatial boundaries, reply to conversation initiators, disengage appropriately at the end of an interaction, and identify potential communication partners. We describe design principles for Ubicomp technologies to support interaction immediacy and present an example design. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, we present an understanding of social skills in mobile and dynamic contexts. Second, we introduce the concept of interaction immediacy and show its effectiveness as a guiding principle for the design of Ubicomp applications.
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