Developing Visual Perceptual Skills with Assistive Technology Supported Application for Children with Cerebral Palsy

Abstract

Visual perception (VP) allows us to process visual stimuli to identify what we see and, thus, understand the world in which we live. VP ability is one of the many cognitive areas often affected in children with cerebral palsy (CP). VP deficits may lead to difficulties in learning, recognizing, and remembering letters and words and learning basic mathematical concepts. We created and applied special educational software for children with CP to develop their VP skills. This study aimed to investigate the long-term effects of the software we created to develop the VP skills of CP patients. We randomly assigned 18 participants to equally sized intervention (n=9) and control (n=9) groups and another 12 typically developing samples to compare VP skills. The duration of the intervention was 15 minutes, three times a week, for one school semester (9 months). We used the Motor-Free Visual Perception Test – 4 (MVPT-4) before and after the intervention to evaluate the VP skills, combined with eye-tracking to identify gaze patterns that provide valuable information on the participants during the test solving. Due to the small sample size, we did not expect significant changes, but a positive tendency is captured in the VP skills of the intervention group. We found significant differences (p<0,001) in comparing VP skills of typically and atypically developing children. In this study, we present only preliminary results of the eye-tracking data, which seems an appropriate method combined with the MVPT-4 assessment.