Case BELKA (Squirrel)

This is the first case out of two presented in this chapter recorded on December 1, 2020 (Ivan is 8 years old). During this case, Ivan and his schoolteacher Tatiana are doing Russian language exercises on Ivan’s computer at his home. Tatiana uses a touchpad and a keyboard to control the computer with her hands, while Ivan uses an eyetracking device and a mouse control app (bottom of screen) which allows him to manipulate the mouse with his eye gaze, including clicking, scrolling, dragging and zooming functions. Ivan discovers that he can use the sounding function of the speech synthesizer, and starts to “play around” with it, voicing the same sounds multiple times and showing visible joy from this newly discovered opportunity. Tatiana doesn’t acknowledge this “discovery” and doesn’t share Ivan’s joy. Instead, she proceeds with “business as usual” (or assignment as usual) and reads Ivan’s actions as correct or incorrect answers.