Fingers Exergames to Improve Fine Motor Skill in Autistic Children

Authors: Zulhisyam Salleh, Fizatul Aini Patakor, Rosilah Wahab, Awangku Khairul Ridzwan Awangku Jaya

Abstract:

Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how people perceive the world and interact with others. Most of these children have difficulty with fine motor skills which typically struggle with handwriting and fine activities in their routine life such as getting dressed and controlled use of the everyday tool. Because fine motor activities encompass so many routine functions, a fine motor delay can have a measurable negative impact on a person's ability to handle daily practical tasks. This project proposed a simple fine motor exercise aid plus the game (exergame) for autistic children who discover from fine motor difficulties. The proposed exergame will be blinking randomly and user needs to bend their finger accordingly. It will notify the user, whether they bend the right finger or not. The system is realized using Arduino, which is programmed to control all the operated circuit. The feasibility studies with six autistic children were conducted and found the child interested in using exergame and could quickly get used to it. This study provides important guidance for future investigations of the exergame potential for accessing and improving fine motor skill among autistic children.

Keywords: Autism children, Arduino project, fine motor skill, finger exergame.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3593180

References:

[1] E. S. Lebarton and J. M. Iverson, “Fine motor skill predicts expressive language in infant siblings of children with autism,” Dev. Sci., vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 815–827, 2013.
[2] K. Libertus, K. A. Sheperd, S. W. Ross, and R. J. Landa, “Limited Fine Motor and Grasping Skills in 6-Month-Old Infants at High Risk for Autism,” Child Dev., vol. 85, no. 6, pp. 2218–2231, 2014.
[3] H. Zhao, Z. Zheng, A. Swanson, A. Weitlauf, Z. Warren, and N. Sarkar, “Design of a Haptic Virtual System for Improving Fine Motor Skills in Children with Autism,” Adv. Intell. Syst. Comput., vol. 592, no. 4, pp. 204–216, 2018.
[4] S. Finkelstein, A. Nickel, T. Barnes, and E. A. Suma, “Astrojumper: motivating children with autism to exercise using a VR game,” in Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA ’10, 2010, p. 4189.
[5] L. Ketcheson, J. Hauck, and D. Ulrich, “The effects of an early motor skill intervention on motor skills, levels of physical activity, and socialization in young children with autism spectrum disorder: A pilot study,” Autism, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 481–492, 2017.
[6] H. L. McGlashan, C. C. V. Blanchard, J. S. Nicole, R. Lee, B. French, and N. J. Sycamore, “Improvement in children’s fine motor skills following a computerized typing intervention,” Hum. Mov. Sci., vol. 56, no. December 2016, pp. 29–36, 2017.
[7] E. Bremer, R. Balogh, and M. Lloyd, “Effectiveness of a fundamental motor skill intervention for 4-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder: A pilot study,” Autism, vol. 19, no. 8, pp. 980–991, 2015.
[8] K. Caro, M. Tentori, A. I. Martinez-Garcia, and I. Zavala-Ibarra, “FroggyBobby: An exergame to support children with motor problems practicing motor coordination exercises during therapeutic interventions,” Comput. Human Behav., vol. 71, pp. 479–498, 2017.
[9] S. Cai, G. Zhu, Y. T. Wu, E. Liu, and X. Hu, “A case study of gesture-based games in enhancing the fine motor skills and recognition of children with autism,” Interact. Learn. Environ., vol. 26, no. 8, pp. 1039–1052, 2018.
[10] G. Zhu, S. Cai, Y. Ma, and E. Liu, “A Series of leap motion-based matching games for enhancing the fine motor skills of children with autism,” Proc. - IEEE 15th Int. Conf. Adv. Learn. Technol. Adv. Technol. Support. Open Access to Form. Informal Learn. ICALT 2015, pp. 430–431, 2015.
[11] S. P. Ramya S. Moorthy, “Teaching Psychomotor Skills to Autistic Children by Employing a Robotic Training Kit: A Pilot Study,” Int. J. Soc. Robot., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 97–108, 2017.