ABSTRACT
Lacey, a 10-year-old girl, and her 14-year-old brother, Ben, sit on the floor of his room preparing to explore a virtual world on his laptop. The process begins with some confusion, as they discuss which avatar to use and complain about the design of the world's opening user interface. While playing, these siblings hand off control of the mouse frequently, with Ben completing one activity while Lacey directs his attention to objects on the screen. Then they switch, with Lacey controlling the avatar while Ben advises her on where to go next. At one point, they visit a section of the world where avatars are able to interact with each other; however, they quickly lose interest in this activity, citing the restrictive nature of the chat system as a reason. Moving on to a different part of the world, Lacey and Ben share responsibility for reading the in-world text, sometimes taking turns and other times reading the same sentence collaboratively, working together to figure out the cryptic in-game clues. Lacey, who has struggled with reading due to dyslexia, takes the initiative on seeking out these in-game texts, searching for information about how to complete various puzzlelike challenges. At one point, she suggests searching the Web for a text-based ‘walk-through’ to help them complete a particularly difficult quest; however, Ben persuades her to work though the activity with him using a process of trial and error. At one point they both jump for the keyboard at the same time, rushing to turn off an ad embedded in the world before the pop-up images have a chance to appear on the screen.
