Implementing a serious game for children with autism in Palestine

العناوين الأخرى

بناء الألعاب التعليمية الهادفة للأطفال المصابين بالتوحد في فلسطين

مقدم أطروحة جامعية

Ihammudah, Wafa

مشرف أطروحة جامعية

Nawahdah, Mamun

الجامعة

جامعة بيرزيت

الكلية

كلية الهندسة و التكنولوجيا

القسم الأكاديمي

دائرة علم الحاسوب

دولة الجامعة

فلسطين (الضفة الغربية)

الدرجة العلمية

ماجستير

تاريخ الدرجة العلمية

2018

الملخص الإنجليزي

The purpose of this research is to identify the effectiveness of using the developed serious game in empowering social and communication skills of children with autism.

Autism as one of the most common disorder which is rapidly increasing in many countries[51].

Often, it is difficult for children with autism to communicate well and normally interact with others.

In this thesis, we have developed a serious game to help children with autism to overcome their social and communication problems.

The game is implemented based on PECS system which is the most popular intervention system for improving communication and social skills for children with autism, the PECS phases have been gradually applied and mapped to the game levels and sub-levels.

In the game design phase, we started by studying the requirements of autism disorder followed by collecting information and data about the participants and suggestions from the therapists and speech language pathologist ended with conducting experiment to investigate our research questions.

Three ways were used to collect the data.

The first one, collecting real-time data directly from the game presented by targeted variables such as ,response time, playing duration,etc to our server database.

The second, observational variables which have been collected by using camera and notes from experimenter and therapist who have attended the game, post-test sessions.

Finally, the questionnaire data which was distributed to twenty specialists in two autism centers in Palestine.

The experiment results showed a positive impact in promoting children with autism motor skills, their interactive functionality.

Paired t-test results showed a significant difference between pretest and post-test on achievement language skills, which proved the effectiveness of the game in improving the language skills in requesting, rejecting, etc.

Related to the social impact; the observational data showed the ability of the game in encouraging the social behaviors such as exchanging eye contact and asking for help.

In addition, the results from the collaboration levels showed the game ability in getting intentional communication to play it and stimulates the emergence of behaviors lacking in the children with autism.

Out of the specialists’ answers the majority of them confirmed the ability of the game in enjoying children with autism.

Also, they see the ability of the game in helping them to overcome on communication and social problems that they faced in their daily life.

The developed game is an educational game with educational target by containing educational roles based on PECS and attractive factors.

Educational roles are given in a form of visual scanning, matching, ability to distinguish, build a complete sentence based on functional communication skills, ask and comments.

التخصصات الرئيسية

علم النفس
تكنولوجيا المعلومات وعلم الحاسوب

الموضوعات

• الأطفال
• التوحد
• فلسطين
• الألعاب الإلكترونية

عدد الصفحات

73

قائمة المحتويات

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

لغة النص

الإنجليزية

نوع البيانات

رسائل جامعية

رقم السجل

BIM-836450