Serious Game for Dyslexia Screening: Design and Verification

Abstract

This paper describes the process we undertook to develop a game-based approach to collect data for the diagnosis of dyslexia in children between the ages of 6 and 12 years old. A number of data collection approaches have been used previously such as eye tracking, MRI, EEG and game based approaches. Data collection can be a challenging task, as many of these approaches rely on use of specialized technology and in the case of MRI and EEG approaches, also require the presence of experts. In contrast, game based data collection is less intrusive and does not require the presence of experts or specialized devices. The content of the game in this research work was designed by identifying the problems faced by children with dyslexia in different age groups, designing questions to evaluate these problems and finally, validating the game design through two formative evaluations and with domain experts. This initial study and its statistical analysis showed a significant difference in the performance of children with dyslexia from children without dyslexia when playing the game.