JECRIPE

Abstract

Digital games are usually developed to provide fun for people of all ages. Although games have been mostly used for entertainment purposes, they have great potential as an intervention tool in health care. Digital games can be applied in health care helping users to learn or to experience something in a fun way. However, there are important issues to be considered to achieve this goal, specially in the development of applications for people with special needs. In this work, we are concerned specifically with Down syndrome needs, and we present an unhackneyed game for children with Down syndrome between 3 to 7 years old. Children in pre-scholar age need to be stimulated considering different cognitive areas. The stimulation of such cognitive areas can provide good results in the development over the years. Given the current demand and absence of games that fulfill Down syndrome special needs, we developed JECRIPE. JECRIPE is a digital game that stimulates the specific cognitive abilities: imitation, perception, fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and receptive and expressive verbal language. This paper describes how these cognitive areas are used to stimulate children with Down syndrome in pre-scholar age and some technical issues in the development of the game.