Serious Game for Children with Autism to Learn Vocabulary: An Experimental Evaluation

ABSTRACT

The use of serious games (SGs) to provide intervention for various skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has increased in the recent years. However, the potential of these games has not been utilized to provide learning of vocabulary to children with ASD. In designing games for children with ASD, there is a need to consider components specifically from the perspectives of ASD and the generic components that can support from the theoretical, content, and game design aspects. In the absence of any existing framework to design games for children with ASD, this article first introduces a framework named serious game design framework (SGDF), constructed to provide support throughout the design process. This framework was constructed based on the extensive review of the literature on ASD and existing SGDFs. The article then focuses on the design and development of a SG prototype based on SGDF. An experimental evaluation prototype was conducted to examine the effectiveness using the withdrawal design of single-subject research design (SSRD) in improving the receptive identification of vocabulary items among children with autism before and after using the prototype. The receptive identification of vocabulary items is measured in terms of the number of correct responses given and the number of attempts made to identify the correct response. The pre- and post-evaluations of the SG prototype show that learning of vocabulary items among children with ASD improved after using the game and they retained items at the end of weeks 1 and 2 following the withdrawal of intervention.

KEYWORDS:

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
• language comprehension skills
• vocabulary
• computer-based intervention (CBI)
• serious game prototype evaluation

Acknowledgment

This research is supported by the University of Malaya High Impact Research Grant UM.C/625/1/HIR/MOHE/FCSIT/05 from the Ministry of Education Malaysia.

Notes

¹ http://dictionary.reference.com/.

² https://www.google.com.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kamran Khowaja

Kamran Khowaja received his BCS and MCS from Isra University, Pakistan, MSc from Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand and PhD from the University of Malaya (UM), Malaysia. He is currently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Isra University. His areas of research include Human – Computer Intearction, Child – Computer Interaction and Serious Games.

Siti Salwah Salim

Siti Salwah Salim received her BSc (Hons) from Wichita State University, USA, and her PhD from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), UK. She is currently a Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, Malaysia. She supervises PhD and Master’s students in the areas of Human–Computer Interaction, Software Engineering, Assistive Technology, and E-Learning.