Exploration in the Design and Development of Emotive Teaching Aids

Abstract: Children with autism spectrum disorder often struggle with emotional communication due to innate emotional disorders. They find it difficult to express their own emotions and also struggle to understand the emotional states of others. These innate emotional barriers force them to rote memorize or mechanically learn specific emotional expressions, hindering effective emotional communication and expression.However, the abstract nature of emotional communication issues makes it challenging for autistic children to effectively express their feelings, leading to negative behaviors such as violence or self-harm due to emotional repression.To address this, we aimed to develop emotive toys, incorporating metacognitive game mechanics, to serve as tools for emotional communication and training for children with autism. For this purpose, we recruited several designers to collaboratively develop these emotive toys through workshops. Empathy mapping was used in these workshops to help the designers understand the emotional communication challenges faced by children with autism and inspire the design of emotive toys.After discussions, the designers proposed three different concepts for emotive toys, from which one was selected for further experimental validation. This selected toy was provided to eight pairs of players for an emotional communication game. The players used the toy's operations and sensory stimuli to communicate and express emotions.The results showed that through this game mechanism, all eight pairs of participants were indeed able to effectively communicate and express emotions, demonstrating that the toy effectively conveyed emotional information.

Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Emotive Perception, Emotive Teaching Aids, Metacognition

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005382

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