Jelle Husson

DYSL-X: Design of a tablet game for early risk detection of dyslexia in preschoolers

The goal of the DYSL-X project is to develop a tool to predict whether a preschooler (5 yrs) shows high risks for developing dyslexia. This tool is a tablet game that incorporates tests to take specific performance measures that allow for this prediction. The game will thus serve as an assessment tool to be used in school psychology services and clinical diagnostic and rehabilitation centers. In order to design the optimal tablet game for preschoolers, during the first phase of the projects several existing games for preschoolers were evaluated in order to derive design guidelines for games targeted at preschoolers. These design guidelines are presented in this paper and next, we show how these guidelines were used to develop the final game of the DYSL-X project.

DIESEL-X: A Game-Based Tool for Early Risk Detection of Dyslexia in Preschoolers

DIESEL-X is a computer game that was developed to detect a high risk for developing dyslexia in preschoolers. The game includes three mini-games that test the player on three skills that are considered to yield outcome measures that predict the onset of dyslexia: the detection threshold of frequency modulated tones, a test on phonological awareness in which the player has to identify words that have the same phonetic ending, and a test on letter knowledge. In order to keep the motivation of the player high during testing, these tests are embedded in a computer game. We discuss the participatory design process that was adopted to design and develop the game, the rationale behind the design decisions, and we describe the resulting games.

Design of the Game-Based Learning Environment “Dudeman & Sidegirl: Operation Clean World,” a Numerical Magnitude Processing Training

Numerical magnitude processing has been shown to play a crucial role in the development of mathematical ability and intervention studies have revealed that training children’s numerical magnitude processing has positive effects on their numerical magnitude processing skills and mathematics achievement. However, from these intervention studies, it remains unclear whether numerical magnitude processing interventions should focus on training with a numerical magnitude comparison or a number line estimation task. It also remains to be determined whether there is a different impact of training symbolic versus nonsymbolic numerical magnitude processing skills. In order to answer these two questions, we developed four game-based learning environments, using the storyline of “Dudeman & Sidegirl: Operation clean world”. The first two game-based learning environments comprise either a numerical magnitude comparison or a number line estimation training and the last two game-based learning environments stimulate either the processing of symbolic or nonsymbolic numerical magnitudes.

Boneshaker: a generic framework for building physical therapy games

We present the Boneshaker framework, a generic framework developed to facilitate the design of physical therapy games with the Unity 3D engine. The Boneshaker framework lowers the threshold for developing a variety of physical therapy games as it allows both developer and therapist to quickly add input devices and change specific game dynamics/therapy exercises.