Beyond Categories: Capturing the Characteristics, Context, Contributions and Complexity of Neurodiverse Social Play

Brooke Morris, Alison Oldfield & Oussama Metatla. 2025.

ACM IDC Conference on Interaction Design and Children

The IDC community is increasingly interested in technologies that promote inclusive social play, particularly for neurodiverse groups of children. However, much of the research in this area relies on historic categorisations of play that are based on `typical' play behaviours. These classifications can often fail to account for `divergent' play styles that may be exhibited by neurodivergent children. In this paper, we demonstrate how these traditional classifications of play fail to adequately capture the complexity of neurodiverse social play and propose an initial alternative model for the analysis of neurodiverse play behaviours. We illustrate the model's potential use through observations of children's neurodiverse social play with a technology and then reflect on its ability to more effectively capture the diversity of play styles within neurodiverse groups.