A serious game for children with speech disorders and hearing problems

Abstract

Electronics and Computer Engineering"Creativity, problem solving, critical and analytical thinking, decision making, risk taking, all found in game-based learning.". Mark Grundel A Serious Game for Children with Speech Disorders and Hearing ProblemsNahid Nasiri AbstractSpeech impediment affecting children with hearing difficulties and speech disorders requires speech therapy and much practice to overcome. In fact, speech therapy via serious games gives an opportunity to children with speech disorders and hearing problems to overcome their problems. As far as children are more inclined to play games, so we intend to learn them by entertainments like serious games. In this thesis, we have designed and implemented a serious game that can be used both as a therapy and as a tool to measure the performance of children with speech impediments in which children will learn to speak specific words that they are expected to know before the age of 7. And then we will teach them how to make sentences. The game consists of three steps. The first step provides information for parents or therapists to decide if their child needs speech therapy or not. In the second step, the child starts to learn specific words while playing the game. The third step aims to measure the performance of the child and evaluate how much the child has learned at the end of the game. The game has an avatar which can be controlled by the child through speech, with the objective of moving the avatar around the environment to earn coins. The avatar is controlled by both voice commands such as Jump, Ahead, Back, Left, Right, and arrow keys of the keyboard. The child will be guided by an arrow during the game instead of getting help from a therapist or a teacher to guide the child to the next goal. This allows the child to practice longer hours, compared to clinical approaches under the supervision of a therapist, which are time-limited. Our preliminary performance measurements indicate an improvement of 40% for children who play our game at least 5 times and a specific period of time.

Development of a Virtual Reality-Based Game Approach for Supporting Sensory Processing Disorders Treatment

“…SPD may also be a symptom of speech disorder, if the person affected has modulation and/or discrimination problems related to the auditory stimulus [1]. We identified works that use VR as an alternative treatment for speech sound disorders (SSD) and hearing problems, [26,27]. Nasiri et al [26] developed a game to help children with hearing and speech disorders to learn how to speak basic words which should be known before the age of 7.…”

“…We identified works that use VR as an alternative treatment for speech sound disorders (SSD) and hearing problems, [26,27]. Nasiri et al [26] developed a game to help children with hearing and speech disorders to learn how to speak basic words which should be known before the age of 7. The player interacts with the game by voice commands allowing him/her to control his/her own avatar (by saying words to make it move within the scenario) and complete game tasks (listening and repeating basic words).…”

“…A literature review indicated that Virtual Reality (VR) has been used to support treatment for various health conditions, including disorders that have SPD as a symptom, such as Vestibular Disorders [9][10][11][12][13][14], Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) [15][16][17][18][19][20], Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) [21][22][23][24][25] and Speech Disorder [26,27]. All of these VR solutions have been used for rehabilitation and treatment of patients with different conditions, many of which are closely related to SPD.…”

Information and communication technology in the rehabilitation of hearing-impaired children

“…The main advantage of the program is providing feedback in the form of clear instructions on how to improve articulation (Engwall et al, 2006). Nasiri et al (2017) have developed the game by which children can learn words that they are expected to know by the age of seven. The game consists of an avatar controlled by the child's voice commands.…”

Pragmatics Communication Deficiencies and the Role of Gamification

“…These may include the use of avatars (Nasiri, Shirmohammadi, & Rashed, 2017), virtual reality (Gamito et al, 2017), artificial intelligence (Sharma & Carter, 2017), speech technology (Strik, Palumbo, Wet, & Cucchiarini, 2015), e-questionnaires (Aslam, Sidorov, Bogomazov, Berezyuk, & Brown, 2017), games (Lekka, Toki, Tsolakidis, & Pange, 2017) and others.…”