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Serious Games to Support Cognitive Development in Children with Cerebral Visual Impairment

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Abstract

Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) is a disability that entails a visual deficit, due to a brain damage. Children affected by this disability are not able to see an object if it is not moving. In this paper, we present a study on the use of serious games in the assessment and rehabilitation of children with CVI. Our serious games help them keeping focused on the exercise by using touch interface, game paradigm and cartoon characters. The paper reports lesson learned from data collected in a user study to highlight the high potential of using these games also in the rehabilitation process. For this reason, we develop the games also in the mobile platforms to allow children to train their skills at home, i.e., more intensively and in a familiar environment.

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Notes

  1. http://aws-website-theeyetribe-lbmoo.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/theeyetribe.com/about/index.html

  2. Consider that the distance is computed from the center of the picture, but the picture itself has a dimension, which depends on the user’s setting, and in this case is 200x400 pixels.

  3. https://phonegap.com/

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank first of all parents and children who accepted to participate in this study as well as the two kindergartens Regina Elena and Nostra Signora di Fatima, in Padua, for organizing and facilitating data collection. We are grateful also to Monica Mazzarolo, the orthoptist who helped us collecting data with children with CVI.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Matteo Ciman & Ombretta Gaggi

  2. Department of Philosphy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Teresa Maria Sgaramella & Laura Nota

  3. Centro di Ateneo Disabilità Riabilitazione e Integrazione, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Ombretta Gaggi, Teresa Maria Sgaramella, Laura Nota & Margherita Bortoluzzi

  4. University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Luisa Pinello

Authors
  1. Matteo Ciman
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  2. Ombretta Gaggi
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  3. Teresa Maria Sgaramella
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  4. Laura Nota
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  5. Margherita Bortoluzzi
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  6. Luisa Pinello
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Correspondence to Ombretta Gaggi.

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Ciman, M., Gaggi, O., Sgaramella, T.M. et al. Serious Games to Support Cognitive Development in Children with Cerebral Visual Impairment. Mobile Netw Appl 23, 1703–1714 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-018-1066-3

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