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Toward the Design of Enjoyable Games for Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

Published: 23 April 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a heterogeneous and complex set of disorders caused by prenatal alcohol exposure, estimated to affect 2-5% of the North American population. Deficits associated with FASD affect social skill development and executive function, including emotional regulation and impulse control. These deficits can increase the difficulty of playing digital games. While considerable research has been performed in understanding how to design games for people with neurodevelopmental disorders in general, there is little data on how to design engaging games for children with FASD. We conducted a ten-week in-school gaming trial with eleven elementary-aged children with diagnosed or suspected FASD. Participants enjoyed playing together and responded well to the in-game reward system, while some game elements caused unexpected frustration. Based on our observations, we advise that games for FASD be designed to have low cost of failure, avoid retracting options, account for taking breaks when needed, show progression in rewards, and enable cooperative play.

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  • (2024)The Age-Reward Perspective: A Systematic Review of Reward Mechanisms in Serious Games for Older PeopleProceedings of the 2024 ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences10.1145/3639701.3656327(168-181)Online publication date: 7-Jun-2024
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  • (2023)Heated Behaviour in the Classroom for Children with FASD: The Relationship between Characteristics Associated with ADHD, ODD and ASD, Hot Executive Function and Classroom Based Reward SystemsChildren10.3390/children1004068510:4(685)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2023
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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2020
10688 pages
ISBN:9781450367080
DOI:10.1145/3313831
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 23 April 2020

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Author Tags

  1. FASD
  2. executive function
  3. fetal alcohol spectrum disorder
  4. game design
  5. social play

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  • (2024)The Age-Reward Perspective: A Systematic Review of Reward Mechanisms in Serious Games for Older PeopleProceedings of the 2024 ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences10.1145/3639701.3656327(168-181)Online publication date: 7-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Co-design of educational social games with newcomer children: a case study of arabic-speaking migrant tweensBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2024.230744943:16(4222-4245)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2024
  • (2023)Heated Behaviour in the Classroom for Children with FASD: The Relationship between Characteristics Associated with ADHD, ODD and ASD, Hot Executive Function and Classroom Based Reward SystemsChildren10.3390/children1004068510:4(685)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Supporting Aim Assistance Algorithms through a Rapidly Trainable, Personalized Model of Players’ Spatial and Temporal Aiming AbilityProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581293(1-17)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)An Examination of Motivation in Physical Therapy Through the Lens of Self-Determination Theory: Implications for Game DesignProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581171(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2022)What Do Users Think of Promotional Gamification Schemes? A Qualitative Case Study in a Question Answering WebsiteProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35551246:CSCW2(1-34)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
  • (2022)Reporting Back in HCI Work with ChildrenProceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3501712.3535279(517-522)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2022

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