Look at me and grab this! Materiality and the practices around negotiation of social attention with children on the autistic spectrum

In this paper, we present a tangible tool that supports therapists in engaging autistic children on simple educational activities of categorization of objects. The tool has been designed to digitally augment an approach routinely used in cognitive training. An initial pilot evaluation provides evidence of its effectiveness of engaging children and focusing their attention on a given task. A novel aspect of this work is the possibility offered to therapists by the material aspect of the tool to positively influence social attention of children. This work, although preliminary, contributes as a design case study to understanding of the relationship between social practices and the design space for digital artifacts that are built to support these practices.