The research behind ND Code

Strengths that show up in coding

1. Autistic students choose STEM, and computer science most of all

   A national study of U.S. college students found that 34% of autistic students chose a STEM major, more than any other group in the study. For college students overall it was 23%. Computer science was autistic students' top STEM choice, at 16%. The same study found autistic students were among the least likely to enroll in college at all. The interest is there. Getting in the door is the problem.

   SRI International and Washington University in St. Louis · Wei, Yu, Shattuck, McCracken and Blackorby, 2013 · Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

   What we built: a system kids can see. The robot lives on a grid, every rule works the same way every time, and feedback is exact: "The robot stopped on C3. The star is 2 squares right."

2. People in science and tech score higher on autistic traits

   In a study of 450,394 people, those who worked in STEM jobs scored higher, on average, on a measure of autistic traits than people in other jobs. The researchers link this to systems thinking: a drive to understand how rule-based things work.

   University of Cambridge, Autism Research Centre · Ruzich, Allison, Chakrabarti, Smith, Musto, Ring and Baron-Cohen, 2015 · PLOS ONE

   What we built: practice that rewards finding the pattern, not memorizing an answer. Kids compare sorting methods in a race, log their own test runs to find a rule, and solve mats that change every time.

3. ADHD and hyperfocus

   Adults with more ADHD traits reported more hyperfocus, a deep, absorbed state of attention, in school, in hobbies and on screens. In a second study, people who reported having ADHD scored higher on every hyperfocus measure.

   University of Michigan, with the University of Florida · Hupfeld, Abagis and Shah, 2019 · ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders

   What we built: short levels with one clear step on screen at a time, so focus lands on the task. Hyperfocus can make stopping hard too, so an optional focus rhythm suggests a 3 minute break every 10 minutes, with a slow color bar instead of a ticking countdown.

4. ADHD and creativity

   Adults with ADHD scored higher on original thinking and reported more real-world creative achievement than adults without ADHD. They also preferred the idea-generating part of problem solving.

   University of Michigan and Eckerd College · White and Shah, 2011 · Personality and Individual Differences

   What we built: room to invent. Free build is always open: kids design their own mat and solve it. Later units ask them to add their own twist to a helper's code.

5. Software engineers with ADHD

   In interviews and a survey, software engineers with ADHD described real challenges with organizing tasks and estimating time. They also described strengths: creativity, doing well at puzzles and thinking ahead.

   Reykjavik University, ISAE-ENSMA and the Federal University of Pernambuco · Liebel, Langlois and Gama, 2024 · International Conference on Software Engineering

   What we built: the organizing is done for you. Each level is broken into steps that tick themselves off, and "Break it down" splits a step into even smaller actions.

6. Dyslexia and exploration

   Researchers argue that dyslexia reflects a specialization in exploring the unknown, which supports discovery, invention and creativity. They say schools aren't designed to make the most of this kind of learning.

   University of Cambridge, with the University of Strathclyde · Taylor and Vestergaard, 2022 · Frontiers in Psychology

   What we built: learning by trying. Running code is free and safe, mistakes get a clear, kind message, and there's no penalty for experimenting. Reading is kept short, and everything can be read aloud.

What helps neurodivergent kids learn to code

1. Computational thinking built for neurodiversity

   Students using INFACT, a computational thinking curriculum designed for neurodivergent learners, scored about a third of a standard deviation higher on a computational thinking test than students in comparison classes. In a follow-up analysis, students in the lowest third on an executive function screener gained the most. Teachers credited several ways into each activity, movement, and working in pairs.

   TERC, with the University of Florida, Florida State University and the University of Maryland · Asbell-Clarke, Dahlstrom-Hakki and others, 2024 · Frontiers in Education

   What we built: several ways into every level (blocks with pictures or words, three typing styles, read aloud) and executive function supports on the screen itself: one step at a time, a checklist that ticks itself, and a worked example you can open whenever you want.

2. Programming robots builds self-control skills

   First graders with special needs, including attention problems and language difficulties, programmed floor robots on a grid twice a week for 10 weeks. Their inhibition skills, stopping and checking before acting, improved. The lessons used visual cards, frequent breaks and token rewards.

   University of Pisa, IRCCS Stella Maris, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies and the University of Florence · Di Lieto and others, 2020 · Frontiers in Psychology

   What we built: a robot on a grid mat that kids program one block at a time. Run one step lets them stop and check each move before the next.

3. Show, do it together, then try

   High school students with autism and challenging behavior learned block-based coding of robots when it was taught with model, lead, test: show it, do it together, then let the student try. All three students learned the first code, used it in new ways, and went on to write and test their own.

   Knight, Wright, Wilson and Hooper, 2019 · Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

   What we built: every level has a worked example to look at first, hints that walk through it together, then a goal to try alone.

4. Rewards that come right away

   A review of 22 studies with 1,181 children found that rewards improved performance and motivation for all children, a little more for children with ADHD, and that children with ADHD prefer rewards that come right away over rewards that come later.

   Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam · Luman, Oosterlaan and Sergeant, 2005 · Clinical Psychology Review

   What we built: small rewards, often. A gem lights up for each step, XP arrives as you go, and a chest shows up every few levels, instead of one prize at the very end.

5. Praise the work, not the brain

   Children praised for being smart showed less persistence, less enjoyment and worse performance after a setback than children praised for their effort.

   Columbia University · Mueller and Dweck, 1998 · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

   What we built: stickers that praise how you worked: Step-by-step, Try try again, Helper checker, Comeback coder. There are no "genius" badges and nothing rewards speed.

6. Start with blocks

   High school students who started with block-based programming showed greater learning gains, and more interest in taking more computing classes, than students who started with typed code.

   University of Chicago and Northwestern University · Weintrop and Wilensky, 2017 · ACM Transactions on Computing Education

   What we built: everyone starts with blocks. Typed code comes later, when the ideas are already familiar.

7. Add punctuation a little at a time

   Hedy, a teaching language, starts with no brackets, colons or indentation, and adds them gradually until students are writing Python. In its first study, 12% of 9,714 student programs had an error. The author notes that's lower than rates reported for typical first languages, though the comparison is rough.

   Leiden University · Hermans, 2020 · International Computing Education Research conference

   What we built: three typing styles for the same program. Words style has no punctuation at all, Brackets style adds brackets and quote marks, and Python style is real Python. New ideas are named by their physical job first ("look up a label"), and the computer science word comes second ("a dictionary").

8. Show blocks and code side by side

   A college course showed the same example in Alice, a drag-and-drop language, and in Java, side by side, with lines drawn between matching parts. Test scores rose by at least one letter grade compared with earlier classes.

   Carnegie Mellon University · Dann, Cosgrove, Slater, Culyba and Cooper, 2012 · ACM SIGCSE

   What we built: a code panel that shows the typed version of your blocks as you build. Tap a line of code to find its block.

9. More space between letters

   Children with dyslexia read about 20% faster, with about half as many errors, when letters were spaced wider apart, with no training needed.

   University of Padova and Aix-Marseille University (CNRS) · Zorzi and others, 2012 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

   What we built: a Roomy spacing setting that widens letter, word and line spacing, and a text size control.

10. Reading aloud helps understanding

    A review of 22 studies found that text-to-speech and read-aloud tools improved reading comprehension for students with reading disabilities, a small to moderate effect.

    Wood, Moxley, Tighe and Wagner, 2018 · Journal of Learning Disabilities

    What we built: read aloud for blocks, steps and messages, using the voice already on the device. Nothing is sent to a voice service.

Why it matters

Companies have started hiring for these strengths. In a 2017 Harvard Business Review article, researchers from Harvard Business School and the Ivey Business School described neurodiversity programs at SAP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Microsoft and others. At one government agency, early results suggested Hewlett Packard Enterprise's neurodiverse software testing teams were 30% more productive than other teams. Austin and Pisano, 2017.

Kids who think differently deserve a first coding experience that fits them. Many of them will be very good at this.

What this research doesn't prove

• Averages aren't promises. These are group findings. Plenty of autistic, ADHD and dyslexic kids won't love coding, and that's fine. Plenty of other kids will.
• Some studies are small or use self-reports. The ADHD creativity study had 60 college students. The hyperfocus studies used self-reported ADHD. The robotics study with autistic students had 3 students. The INFACT result for students with lower executive function came from a follow-up analysis in a study the authors say was too small to be sure.
• One is a theory. The dyslexia and exploration paper builds an argument from existing research. It isn't a new experiment.
• Links aren't causes. The Cambridge study measured traits, not diagnoses, and it shows a link between traits and jobs, not that one causes the other.
• Company results are early. The workplace numbers were reported by the companies and haven't been checked the way a study is.
• Special dyslexia fonts haven't been shown to help. Studies of OpenDyslexic (Wery and Diliberto, 2017) and of the Dyslexie font (Kuster and others, 2018, Radboud University) found no reading benefit. We offer OpenDyslexic because some kids like it. Spacing is the setting with evidence behind it.
• ND Code itself hasn't been studied yet. It's built on this research, but no one has tested ND Code in a controlled study. If you research learning and want to, write to andilata04@gmail.com.

Sources

1. Asbell-Clarke, J., Dahlstrom-Hakki, I., and others (2024). Including neurodiversity in computational thinking. Frontiers in Education, 9, 1358492. doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2024.1358492
2. Austin, R. D., and Pisano, G. P. (2017). Neurodiversity as a competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review, 95(3), 96–103. hbr.org
3. Dann, W., Cosgrove, D., Slater, D., Culyba, D., and Cooper, S. (2012). Mediated transfer: Alice 3 to Java. Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE). alice.org (PDF)
4. Di Lieto, M. C., Castro, E., Pecini, C., Inguaggiato, E., Cecchi, F., Dario, P., Cioni, G., and Sgandurra, G. (2020). Improving executive functions at school in children with special needs by educational robotics. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2813. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02813
5. Hermans, F. (2020). Hedy: A gradual language for programming education. Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER). hedy.org (PDF)
6. Hupfeld, K. E., Abagis, T. R., and Shah, P. (2019). Living "in the zone": Hyperfocus in adult ADHD. ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders, 11, 191–208. doi.org/10.1007/s12402-018-0272-y
7. Knight, V. F., Wright, J., Wilson, K., and Hooper, A. (2019). Teaching digital, block-based coding of robots to high school students with autism spectrum disorder and challenging behavior. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49. doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-04033-w
8. Kuster, S. M., van Weerdenburg, M., Gompel, M., and Bosman, A. M. T. (2018). Dyslexie font does not benefit reading in children with or without dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 68, 25–42. PubMed Central
9. Liebel, G., Langlois, N., and Gama, K. (2024). Challenges, strengths, and strategies of software engineers with ADHD: A case study. ICSE Software Engineering in Society. arxiv.org/abs/2312.05029
10. Luman, M., Oosterlaan, J., and Sergeant, J. A. (2005). The impact of reinforcement contingencies on AD/HD: A review and theoretical appraisal. Clinical Psychology Review, 25, 183–213. doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2004.11.001
11. Mueller, C. M., and Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33–52. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.1.33
12. Ruzich, E., Allison, C., Chakrabarti, B., Smith, P., Musto, H., Ring, H., and Baron-Cohen, S. (2015). Sex and STEM occupation predict Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scores in half a million people. PLOS ONE, 10(10), e0141229. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141229
13. Taylor, H., and Vestergaard, M. D. (2022). Developmental dyslexia: Disorder or specialization in exploration? Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 889245. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.889245
14. Wei, X., Yu, J. W., Shattuck, P., McCracken, M., and Blackorby, J. (2013). Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) participation among college students with an autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 43(7), 1539–1546. doi.org/10.1007/s10803-012-1700-z
15. Weintrop, D., and Wilensky, U. (2017). Comparing block-based and text-based programming in high school computer science classrooms. ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 18(1), Article 3. ccl.northwestern.edu (PDF)
16. Wery, J. J., and Diliberto, J. A. (2017). The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy. Annals of Dyslexia, 67, 114–127. PubMed Central
17. White, H. A., and Shah, P. (2011). Creative style and achievement in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(5), 673–677. doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.12.015
18. Wood, S. G., Moxley, J. H., Tighe, E. L., and Wagner, R. K. (2018). Does use of text-to-speech and related read-aloud tools improve reading comprehension for students with reading disabilities? A meta-analysis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(1), 73–84. doi.org/10.1177/0022219416688170
19. Zorzi, M., Barbiero, C., Facoetti, A., and others (2012). Extra-large letter spacing improves reading in dyslexia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(28), 11455–11459. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1205566109

Last checked October 29, 2026. Spot a mistake? Write to andilata04@gmail.com and we'll fix it.