Investigating Visual Perception Impairments through Serious Games and Eye Tracking to Anticipate Handwriting Difficulties

Abstract

Dysgraphia is a learning disability that causes handwritten production below expectations. Its diagnosis is delayed until the completion of handwriting development. To allow a preventive training program, abilities not directly related to handwriting should be evaluated, and one of them is visual perception. To investigate the role of visual perception in handwriting skills, we gamified standard clinical visual perception tests to be played while wearing an eye tracker at three difficulty levels. Then, we identified children at risk of dysgraphia through the means of a handwriting speed test. Five machine learning models were constructed to predict if the child was at risk, using the CatBoost algorithm with Nested Cross-Validation, with combinations of game performance, eye-tracking, and drawing data as predictors. A total of 53 children participated in the study. The machine learning models obtained good results, particularly with game performances as predictors (F1 score: 0.77 train, 0.71 test). SHAP explainer was used to identify the most impactful features. The game reached an excellent usability score (89.4 ± 9.6). These results are promising to suggest a new tool for dysgraphia early screening based on visual perception skills.

Evaluating the Efficacy of a Serious Game in Enhancing Word Reading Speed

“…This is an important achievement, as schools are the first place where learning difficulty should be addressed, before referring children to clinicians, as early identification and training of learning weaknesses assure better efficacy of the training (Kadar et al, 2020). Moreover, objective data coming from the game on reading speed and speed increment after treatment are useful parameters to evaluate children and better characterize their weakness, as fostered by national guidelines on specific learning disabilities diagnosis (Associazione Italiana di Psicologia et al, 2021), as could be smart pens for dysgraphia (Dui et al, 2021), eye tracking for dyslexia (Piazzalunga et al, 2023), and so on.…”

“…In the context of the ESSENCE H2020 project (www.essence2020.eu), several serious games to enhance reading, writing and calculation abilities were implemented, together with a narrative framework aimed at boosting engagement without affecting the "serious" purpose of the games (Piazzalunga, Donati and Ferrante, 2023). One of these games is the Tachistoscopio.…”