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A Serious Game for a Serious Situation: Encouraging Healthy Behaviors for Children with ASD During COVID-19 Pandemic

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Serious Games (JCSG 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13476))

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Abstract

During the past two years, several announcements that are possibly perceived as scary were made about the COVID-19 pandemic and the safety regulations people should follow. Those announcements affected everyone, especially children with Autism Spectrum Disorder since they find difficulties coping with the changes caused by the pandemic. Helping them to adapt during those extraordinary circumstances is even more demanding for their families and caregivers. Hence, as a solution, we designed, developed, and evaluated a serious game that promotes healthy behaviors that are most important during the pandemic for them. The game design follows the guidelines in literature for designing a User Interface suitable for children with ASD. Our preliminary experimental study shows that the presented game is engaging for children with ASD.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Media Engineering and Technology, German University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt

    Menna Elshahawy & Said Mostafa

  2. Faculty of Informatics and Computer Science, The German International University Egypt, Cairo, Egypt

    Nada Sharaf

Authors
  1. Menna Elshahawy
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  2. Said Mostafa
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  3. Nada Sharaf
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Menna Elshahawy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bauhaus University, Weimar, Weimar, Thüringen, Germany

    Heinrich Söbke

  2. Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Pia Spangenberger

  3. TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Philipp Müller

  4. TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel

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Elshahawy, M., Mostafa, S., Sharaf, N. (2022). A Serious Game for a Serious Situation: Encouraging Healthy Behaviors for Children with ASD During COVID-19 Pandemic. In: Söbke, H., Spangenberger, P., Müller, P., Göbel, S. (eds) Serious Games. JCSG 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13476. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15325-9_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15325-9_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-15324-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-15325-9

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