"Restlessness is Exploding": An Investigation of Neurodivergent Graduate Students' Affective Experience Using GenAI in the Writing Process

This essay will explore how writing instruction can benefit by better understanding of how GenAI impacts emotions and, in turn, how those emotions impact its use. More specifically, through a clearer understanding of the emotion and affect of writers with various neurodivergent diagnoses and how and why their emotions and affects can differ during the writing process, we can create educational interventions to meet neurodivergent graduate students' emotional needs, not just the emotional needs of the mythical "general" writing student population. To understand these affective experiences, I devised and implemented a mixed-methods study consisting of a quantitative Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) survey, an ethnographic observation of student GenAI use during the writing process for a university assignment, and a stimulated elicitation follow-up interview using the assignment the participant completed with the help of GenAI during the ethnographic observation. This resulting data, which I shall consider in this essay, trace the affective experiences of these neurodivergent graduate student participants before, during, and after their writing processes while using GenAI.