Touch in learning interactions with autistic children: Socialising attention and engagement

Learning is fundamentally based on the participants' mutual attention, and this attention is accomplished through bodily alignment and observable displays of engagement. Various forms of disengagement are common in educational settings, especially in inclusive classrooms. Drawing on multimodal interaction analysis, the present study explores the role of interpersonal touch as a crucial component of adults' multimodal attempts to re-involve a boy with Asperger's syndrome in instructional activities, focusing on situations associated with frustration and distress. Based on video recordings of instructional activities, the analytical focus is on (i) how the autistic child, through verbal and bodily means, signals the state of his engagement, (ii) how adults use touch together with other resources to re-involve the child, and (iii) how the child responds to touch. By showing how touch is adapted to the child's haptic preferences and used to (re)establish readiness to engage in instructional activities after moments of distress, the study outlines some of the embodied practices relevant to socialising students with ASD into morally accountable ways of participating in everyday learning situations. By observing the child's responses to touch, the study documents not only autistic children's active role in socialisation, but also their competence in accounting for their behaviour.