Unintentional intrusive participation in multimedia interactive environments

This paper presents data from two independent case studies, a 15 year old female with Cerebral Palsy and related profound and multiple learning difficulties and a 7 year old male with extreme behaviour associated with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. An audiovisual immersive interactive environment was developed to encourage creative interaction and expression from the participants. There were support workers present in both case studies and it is the interventions of these support staff which are the main focus of this paper. Results indicated that profuse but unintentional interventions from the staff may have distorted interaction with, dissuaded or diverted participants from meaningful engagements with the reactive feedback provided by the system.