Brainwave-sensing technology and a tablet game app may help children living in poverty to relax and focus enough to learn in school, thanks to research led by SFU professor Alissa Antle and her team at the School of Interactive Art and Technology.
The idea came to Antle while she was speaking with a counselor at a NGO-funded school in Pokhara, Nepal. She realised that her previously designed bio-feedback systems could potentially be adapted to create games which would enable Nepali children to practice self-regulation.
The goal of the technology is to support the children’s’ ability to learn, as many are coming from high-stress situations, such as households with domestic violence and extreme poverty. “It will prepare them to get ready to learn some basic literacy,” Antle said.
A child logs in to the game by touching a photo of their face. The technology picks up brainwaves, sensing when that child is relaxed, focused, or anxious. When children are relaxed or focused, the games respond and they win challenges, gaining tokens.
“The challenge was to get the kids to do what I wanted them to do with their bodies, [for example] relax, without them knowing anything about computers or being able to read instructions,” Antle said. “We needed a system with zero barrier to entry.”
The three games which will be field tested this fall were designed to be culturally relevant to the children.
One game involves blowing on a pinwheel. “When you blow, it relaxes you, and the neuro-feedback loop makes the pinwheel spin,” explained Antle. Another game asks kids to relax, causing a paraglide to land. It will land if the child relaxes, otherwise it is sent back up into the mountains on thermals.
Teachers will be able to monitor the children’s progress. “It usually takes six to eight weeks of 10 minutes a day to see noticeable effects,” Antle said.
She continued, “Anecdotally, we noticed that [working with a previous system] not only were children more able to calm themselves, but as a caregiver, you could remind them of images in the game and this helped them to settle down.”
Antle and the researchers are entering the “usability testing” phase. They will be testing the games with children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Surrey and starting a parallel project to develop new culturally relevant games for these children.
“The approach may be suitable for millions and millions of kids,” Antle said. “My goal would be to hand it out to groups who could roll it out all over the world. Child soldiers in Africa, children with ADHD in Canada. Hopefully, it’s a tool that could help lots of kids.”
