Question: what made you research the influence of technology on children with autism ?

Maggi Laurie answered on 9 Jun 2017:

Thanks for your question Fenella, it’s a really nice one!

I’ve sort of always been interested in working with and helping people who have learning disabilities, and other additional support needs in school. My first ‘grown up’ job was working in a care home with adults who had complex learning disabilities, and there I met an autistic person, called John. John was a truly amazing character – he was hilarious, witty, cheeky, and had such a great personality. After working with John during the summer I was determined to find out more about autism, and since then, I’ve just sort of stuck at it.

Over the years I kept working with different autistic adults, but came to a point where I fancied a change so took a job in a school for autistic children. And well, that was even more exciting to me! Most of the kids I worked with used technology a lot (to communicate through, to play with, to learn things in class) and I was amazed at how these children were using technology to really advance in certain areas. The thing is, I was becoming shocked at recent headlines in the newspapers that were claiming that technology was bad for children, and particularly autistic children. There were claims that technology was making children less socially aware and decreasing their social abilities, which is not what I was seeing in work at all.

I’ve been a really long answer, but the bottom line is that my research question is purely driven by my work experiences in an autistic school. It is a response to unfounded and negative media claims about technology and interaction, and is an attempt to test these claims and provide proper evidence.