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The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the main messages and key questions for further research arising from the seven-seminar series entitled, “Innovative technologies for autism: critical reflections on digital bubbles”, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK.

A synthesis of the main ideas is presented, drawing on the presentations, discussions, participant feedback, and short papers from across the seminar series, which took place between November 2014-2016.

There were many positive examples where technologies were positioned and used as facilitative “bridges” between ideas, communities, understanding, and experiences. Researchers and community stakeholders also emphasised the importance of taking different perspectives and working in stronger partnerships with each other. Four overarching research questions were developed from these themes to provide a roadmap for future research, relating to: responsible innovation, technology-enabled social interaction, learning and pedagogy, and engagement.

The findings and methodologies produced by the Digital Bubbles seminar series, available on the project website (http://digitalbubbles.org.uk/) and in a series of short papers, provide a rich repository of state-of-the-art thinking in the field of autism and technology that is being utilised nationally and internationally in teaching and learning. This paper suggests some valuable future research directions and highlights the importance of establishing and maintaining multi-disciplinary research teams, with autistic people and their families at their core.

Empathy is part of what makes us human and humane, and it has become a core component of the Social Awareness competency of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) (CASEL, 2019). SEL fosters the understanding of others’ emotions, is the basis of Theory of Mind skills and frames the development of empathy. The purpose of this paper is to trace the links between empathy development and social and emotional learning when using real versus virtual environments. Empathy is a uniquely human emotion facilitated by abstract thinking and language. Virtual play is a teaching tool for acquiring prosocial behaviors. And finally, human-mediated (traditional and virtual) play is most favorable for SEL growth. Recognition of emotions such as empathy and other socio-communication skills have been taught to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Therefore, technology can be a venue for acquiring empathy.

This paper uses a qualitative interpretive methodology to advocate for the use of technology with human mediation to teach Social and Emotional Learning skills, based on the premise that cognitive and social-emotional development occurs synergistically and mediated by speech and interaction with the environment.

Technology is best seen as an instrument of assessing and teaching socio-emotional skills, but not as the only means to an end, because what makes us human can only be taught within an ecology of human interaction in real-life situations.

This paper reviews previous research works (both empirical and theoretical) that bring to light the connection between socio-emotional development, specifically empathy development, and virtual environments.

This paper aims to explore the drivers behind the accuracy of self-reported home valuations in the Warsaw (Poland) housing market.

In order to achieve the research goal, firstly, unique data on subjective residential property values estimated by their owners were compared with market-justified ones. The latter was calculated using geographically weighted regression, which allowed for taking into account spatially heterogeneous buyers' housing preferences. An ordered logit model was then used to identify the factors influencing the probability of the occurrence of bias towards over or undervaluation.

The results of the study revealed that, on average, homeowners overvalued their properties by only 1.94%, and the fraction of interviewees estimating their properties accurately ranges from 20% to 68%, depending on the size of the margin of error adopted. The drivers of the valuation bias variation were the physical, locational and neighbourhood attributes of the property as well as the personal characteristics of the respondents, for which their age and employment situation played a key role.

In contrast to previous studies, this is the first to examine drivers behind the accuracy of self-reported home valuations in a Central and Eastern Europe country. In addition, this work is the first to consider heterogeneous housing preferences when calculating objective property values.

The purpose of this study is to understand how neuroscientific tools are used and discussed in ongoing research on strategy in organizations.

The authors used a bibliometric study of bibliographic pairing to answer the research question. They collected data from the Web of Science and Scopus databases using the keywords “neuroscience*,” “neurostrategy*” and “neuroscientific*.”

This study presents a framework that relates fundamental aspects discussed in current research using neuroscientific tools: Neuroscience and its research tools in organizations; emotions and information processing; interdisciplinary application of neuroscientific tools; and moral and ethical influences in the leaders' decision-making process.

The inclusion of neuroscientific tools in Strategic Management research is still under development. There are criticisms and challenges related to the limitations and potential to support future research.

Despite recognizing the potential of neuroscientific tools in the mind and brain relationship, this study suggests that at this stage, because of criticisms and challenges, they should be used as support and in addition to other traditional research techniques to assess constructs and mechanisms related to strategic decisions and choices in organizations.

Neuroscientific methods in organizational studies can provide insights into individual reactions to ethical issues and raise challenging normative questions about the nature of moral responsibility, autonomy, intention and free will, offering multiple perspectives in the field of business ethics.

In addition to presenting the potential and challenges of using scientific tools in strategic management studies, this study helps create methodological paths for studies in strategic management.