Video-game for speech perception testing and training of young hearing-impaired children

This video game is designed for the testing and training of auditory perception in children with hearing losses and/or auditory processing disorders. The child pursues an animated character through a series of scenes, using hearing to identify the character´s hiding place. Attention and compliance are encouraged by an interesting event in each scene (contingent on a correct response) and by the emergence of the character as a real toy (at the end of a run) that can be taken home. The test can be used to estimate the capacity for the perception of phonologically significant speech pattern contrasts such as voicing and place of articulation. The principal cognitive requirement is that of object permanence. The game is suitable for children with a developmental age of approximately 3 years. Stimuli are pre-recorded on video laserdisc and presentation and scoring are under computer control