I will be making a toy (that will hopefully turn into a range of toys in time) that focuses on emotional and cognitive development in children, with disabled children particularly in mind.
The idea is to have the toy react to certain outside stimuli, so the caretaker can use it as a tool.
I have talked to healthcare professionals about the tools they use to encourage development in children and adults with mental disabilities or different developmental stages. They gave me some concepts that will be useful as starting points. Some key points to consider are:
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder and similar conditions have a strong relationship with "order" and "putting things in order". Having their environment ordered in clearly recognizable patterns provides the individuals with comfort.
Similarly, things (or people) doing what the individual expects them to do is important. This includes learning about social cues, a source of confusion and discomfort in interhuman relationships for the individual is that they are unpredictable, which can be helped with providing the individual with a means to "practice", which is usually done by exercises like role play and imaginative play.
Especially for individuals on the autism spectrum, music, particularly classical music is usually a source of great comfort. This is related to the concepts of order and predictability. Music is used as a tool for soothing (and, self-soothing).
The reason for this is still unclear, but blacklight has a very positive effect on individuals on the autism spectrum. Some care centers have rooms with some blacklight bulbs installed. Care should be taken to not expose individuals with epilepsy to this type of light.
Experiencing textures is an important stimulant for children of all stages of development, but it is particularly important and even exhilarating for children on the autism spectrum. Learning to differentiate between similar looking objects using texture is currently used in the care centers.
Bodily awareness, i.e. knowing where parts of your body are in space and where they start and end (the ability to braid your own hair behind your head, for example), is problematic in individuals on the autism spectrum. They benefit from tools to clarify this distinction of the Self and the Other.
Deciding between several choices according to the predicted outcomes and affecting the physical environment with the decisions they make is useful for building the concepts of the Self and Agency.
Using projection to have the same image on different surfaces has been shown to be useful.