Tablet game-supported speech therapy embedded in children’s popular practices

ABSTRACT

Modern speech-language pathology practices (SLPPs) have adopted tablet games in recent years. Research is needed to take advantage of the potential benefits tablets can offer and to explore the factors that influence its introduction. This paper discusses a survey that was conducted to investigate the factors that influence speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) beliefs and the actual use of tablets in SLPPs. The results of the survey, conducted among Slovenian SLPs, indicated that their most positive beliefs concerning tablets relate to social influence. Specifically, the beliefs relate to children’s interest and practice with tablets and have a significant impact on the decision-making of SLPs concerning introducing tablets in therapy. Conversely, SLPs’ most negative beliefs relate to the conditions for facilitating tablet use, particularly the lack of Slovenian applications. This paper discusses a separate case study that was conducted in which tablet game-supported therapy was introduced to a group of 44 children. The case study results indicated that the children accepted the use of tablet games for therapy purposes and the games had a positive impact on the children’s motivation and satisfaction.

KEYWORDS:

• Human–machine interface
• assistive technology
• tablet game
• hand-held device
• field testing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Matej Zajc http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3264-9002

Andreja Istenič Starčič http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0513-5054

Mateja Gačnik http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9286-0486

Additional information

Funding

The project ‘The Creative Way to Practical Knowledge: Learning with the Mobile Terminal is a Play’ was co-financed by the Slovene Ministry of Education, Science and Sport and the European Union through the European Social Fund.