Search for: All records

Abstract Ambient environmental stimuli may impact how a student is or is not able to apply themselves in cognitive and educational tasks. For neurodivergent learners, these barriers can be compounded as they may be more likely to attend to task-irrelevant ambient noise. The affordances of new systems, such as virtual reality (VR), could be useful for allowing neurodivergent students more deliberate control over what information they experience and what information they do not. This study seeks to explore the dynamics of attention in VR environments. To address this, participants were asked to perform a number of visual search tasks in VR to assess the impact of both visual and auditory distractions on speed and accuracy markers. Results indicate a differential impact of background noise on the performance of neurotypical and neurodivergent participants. Potential benefits to neurodiverse populations and design recommendations in this emerging space are discussed. 

This paper reports on a fully inclusive co-design process of an informal VR science game intended to be accessible to a broad range of learners. The co-design embraces the `nothing about us without' us movement by ensuring that stakeholder voices have a prominent role throughout the design process. In the project described in this paper, professional designers and researchers work with a team of neurodiverse stakeholders as peer members of the design team. The design process is described, and the findings based on feedback from all co-design participants is reported. Recommendations for others in the field are provided to help guide those interested in implementing an effective and inclusive co-design process.