Engaging Adolescents with Down Syndrome in an Educational Video Game

ABSTRACT

This article describes the design, implementation and evaluation of an educational video game that helps individuals with Down syndrome to improve their speech skills, specifically those related to prosody. Special attention has been paid to the design of the user interface, taking into account the cognitive, learning, and attentional limitations of people with Down syndrome. The learning content is conveyed by activities of production and perception of prosodic phenomena, aimed at increasing their communicative competence. These activities are introduced within the narrative of a video game so that the players do not conceive the tool as a mere succession of learning activities, but so that they learn and improve their speech while playing. The evaluation strategy that has been followed involves real users and combines different evaluation activities. Results show a high level of acceptance by participants and also by professionals, speech therapists, and special education teachers.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Recercaixa, ACUP, Obra Social “la Caixa” (project “¡Juguemos a comunicar mejor! La mejora de la competencia prosódica como vía de integración educativa e inclusión social del alumnado con necesidades específicas de soporte educativo” - PZ611683-2013ACUP00202), by Fundacion BBVA (project “Pradia: la aventura gráfica de la pragmática y la prosodia” - CF613399), by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad y Fondos FEDER (project “Videojuegos sociales para la asistencia y mejora de la pronunciación de la lengua española” - TIN2014-59852-R) and by Junta de Castilla y León (project “Evaluación automática de la pronunciación del español como lengua extranjera para hablantes japoneses”- VA145U14). The authors would like to thank all the participants who took part in the evaluation. We also would like to thank Yurena Gutiérrez, Patricia Sinobas, Valentín Cardeñoso, Ferran Adell and Juan María Garrido for their collaboration in the project.

Appendix A. Script of the Interview with the Player

• Do you like video games?

• Have you ever played video games before?

• In general, did you like trying it?

• Would you like to play again in the future? Would you like to know how the story continues?

• Did you understand the story?

• Did you like the story?

• Did you like the parrot as the adventure’s companion?

• Did you like talking to the characters of the video game?

• Would you like to create your own avatar (face, eyes, mouth, clothes, etc)?

• Did you learn something with the video game? What?

• Did you like the city images and the people?

• The video game seemed funny or boring.

• The video game seemed easy or hard.

• The video game seemed short or long.

Appendix B. Script of the Interview with the Teachers

• How have you used the video game?

• Do you think that the video game helped them to improve their pronunciation?

• Do you think that the context and the story of the video game are useful to perform the activities?

• Are the instructions suitable? Is the feedback suitable?

• Is it useful that the teacher can decide if the activity is right or wrong?

• What is the reaction of the students during the game sessions?

• Do you think that the virtual assistant is useful?

• What do you think of the graphics?

• Would you recommend the video game?

Additional information

Notes on contributors

César González-Ferreras

César González-Ferreras is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Valladolid, Spain. His research interests include human–computer interaction, spoken language processing and prosody recognition.

David Escudero-Mancebo

David Escudero-Mancebo is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Valladolid, Spain. He is co-author of several publications in the field of computational prosody, both concerning modeling of prosody for text-to-speech systems and prosodic labeling of corpora. His research interests also include human–computer interaction.

Mario Corrales-Astorgano

Mario Corrales-Astorgano is working on a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Valladolid, Spain. His research interests mainly focus on human–computer interaction, especially in the design and evaluation of user interfaces for people with disabilities.

Lourdes Aguilar-Cuevas

Lourdes Aguilar-Cuevas is an Associate Professor at the Department of Spanish Philology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. She is a specialist in experimental phonetics and phonology of intonation in Spanish and Catalan. She has extensive experience in the field of prosody and automatic modeling of prosody.

Valle Flores-Lucas

Valle Flores-Lucas is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Valladolid, Spain. Her research interests focus on the study of the problems of language development and communication, mainly in autism and Down syndrome, and their relationship with the theory of mind.