Pre-verbal discrimination game

Post by **spot** » Sun May 04, 2008 12:48 pm

I'm writing a set of computer games for infants between 6 and 12 months so they have to be simple. Perhaps, since the infant can't exactly give a lot of feedback regarding the design, I might get some here.

This one's meant to assist the infant in discrimination skills. It's called Darker Lighter.

The screen's divided into left, centre and right. The "mouse pointer" is a one-inch photo of the child with a neutral face, neither happy nor sad. The left and right panels are initially set to shades of a colour - for example, one session might concentrate on lilac. One randomly-selected panel's a darker lilac than another. As the game progresses the difference between the shades diminishes but one's always at least slightly darker than the other.

The child pushes the mouse icon to either the left or the right, indicating which it considers the darker shade. The assistant prompts this by saying in a neutral voice "go to the dark side, X" (where X represents whatever the child might recognise as a name or identifier).

If the child manoevers the mouse icon into the correct panel (options might exist to make this harder with a maze mechanism) then he or she is congratulated and the game reset. Positive encouragement in the form of sugarwater on a fingertip might be applied.

Should the child fail to distinguish the correct panel and the mouse icon end up, instead, on the lighter side, then a short video plays comprising the child's mother weeping on-screen to the sound of Ozzy Osbourne singing "no! no! no!" and thunderbolts crashing in the background. This distances the assistant from personally providing negative feedback and diminishes the chance of the child failing to enjoy the game next day.

The game repeats for, say, twenty iterations, and statistics are retained showing the speed and accuracy of response for subsequent analysis.

My theory, which is mine, is that the child will rapidly end up better at distinguishing fine differences in shade than most people and that this will be a good thing and that the child will enjoy playing it.

What design changes would improve the experience?

Chezzie · Post by **Chezzie** » Sun May 04, 2008 12:54 pm

well thats great and you have put alot of effort into it. I may be wrong but im unsure a 6-12 month old baby would "get" the mum crying and ozzy saying no no no to the sound of thunder in the background...Id think this would make them cry lol....maybe a ooops try again in a mumsy voice or a rattle shaking side to side or a teletubby type character popping up saying ohhhhhhhhh ohhhhhhhhh try again lol...

I dunno I may be completely wrong mate:wah:

Post by **spot** » Sun May 04, 2008 1:04 pm

Current projections are that the child will demonstrate a startle reflex, but I've not put the video to the test yet. Perhaps graded negative encouragement should be thought out in more detail rather than having a single state. Would the child not attempt to activate the "ooops" deliberately?

Chezzie · Post by **Chezzie** » Sun May 04, 2008 1:06 pm

spot;856512 wrote: Current projections are that the child will demonstrate a startle reflex, but I've not put the video to the test yet. Perhaps graded negative encouragement should be thought out in more detail rather than having a single state. Would the child not attempt to activate the "ooops" deliberately?

well not if the correct reward noise is more appealing:sneaky:

CARLA · Post by **CARLA** » Sun May 04, 2008 1:09 pm

Did I miss something who is going to control the mouse for the infants they surely can't at 6 months, might be able to at 12 months. Most 6 to 12 month old babies would put the mouse in their mouths and chew on it for a bit, bang it around and then maybe watch the cursor on the screen.

Post by **spot** » Sun May 04, 2008 1:12 pm

I've tested that bit, pushing a mouse icon to one side of the screen or the other is within the range of their dexterity at 6 months. Part of the game is to find out whether pre-verbal reasoning can be linked to the action in exchange for an adequate reward.

eta: Oh, and yes, they chew the mouse too and bang it around a lot.

wardah · Post by **wardah** » Sun May 04, 2008 1:19 pm

would each mother have to video herself weeping especially for the game?

Post by **spot** » Sun May 04, 2008 1:22 pm

Jawohl! I mean - yes, of course.

wardah · Post by **wardah** » Sun May 04, 2008 1:27 pm

and would there be a choice of music? what if the mother just had a truly lamentable taste in music and didn't want ozzy? could she change it to meet her own weedy tastes?

Post by **spot** » Sun May 04, 2008 1:30 pm

Herr Osbourne has been adjudicated by an independent panel to have the highest scare quotient of any living musician, it would be difficult to find a reason to change him.

On the other hand, the panel wasn't provided with clips of that Norwegian Viking Metal Thrash group which paints itself red before concerts and sings "Kill Kill Kill" in all their tracks.

watermark · Post by **watermark** » Sun May 04, 2008 5:31 pm

Hi spot, sounds cool. A little on the experimental side, but I guess no harm done if babies are forced to play it over real life :wah:

My 2 cents would be to put some music to the visuals. You might have tones of higher and lower pitches associated with the darker and lighter screens or even separate these modalities in the game, first visual then auditory.

when will it be out on market?

Patsy Warnick · Post by **Patsy Warnick** » Sun May 04, 2008 9:17 pm

Spot

I've tested the startle reflex

My Nephew (infant 1 to 1 1/2 yrs old) & I were in a grocery store

By the reaction of my Nephew , he proved vocally "That Was The 1 st

Dark Skin Person " My Nephew Was Scared.

I'll never forget it @ 1977

Patsy

Post by **spot** » Mon May 05, 2008 1:10 am

Thank you watermark and yes, I'd not got as far as pitch training but I'd considered redder, bluer, greener and such. I have trouble myself with looking at two colours and saying "that's got more red in it than this", it's all down to experience and I wasn't exposed to that sort of environment. We might even eventually have an advanced play level which gets rid of the reference sound or colour and tests for perfect pitch or perfect colour recognition.

Patsy, I'm pleased I managed to use the words "discrimination" and "darker" in a sentence without it crossing my mind that there were racial overtones. That was 1977? I can get to the nearest year too, the very first time I saw a non-white person in the UK was in 1964 and while I wasn't vocal I was very startled. I didn't get out much either but I'm still amazed it took me that long. I'd seen them on the television, of course, singing about De Camptown Ladies, doodah doodah, so I'd been culturally primed to be shocked. Nobody told me back then that the singing dancing versions on the TV were white fellows in blackface costume and that their traditional hands-to-the-face, fingers-splayed grin was an act. The dead giveaway I'd not spotted was that there were no white lady dancers in blackface costume performing as Eliza rag-doll lookalikes, I'm quite sure from my memories that there weren't. Presumably the viewing public would have felt disquiet at that, it would have been less amusing. What the immigrant community thought of all this I've no idea but I suspect they were baffled, or perhaps they suddenly realized after all those years wondering that they finally understood how the English had become the way they were.

Gwine to run all night! Gwine to run all day! I'll bet my money on de bob-tail nag somebody bet on de bay.

along-for-the-ride · Post by **along-for-the-ride** » Mon May 05, 2008 4:43 pm

Spot, I was trying to get volunteers for you.

Well, 3 out of 4 is not bad.

:D

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watermark · Post by **watermark** » Mon May 05, 2008 6:33 pm

Spot, are you aiming to train our babies? Most likely hearing develops earlier than vision, of course that depends on the individual. I'm thinking that for reading proficiency many young kids need practice hearing the sounds of our language and distinguishing small shifts in tones.

For visual channel, distance learning is probably a more important development than learning about variations in tone like dark to light. What do you say about that spot? Do you agree? At any rate visual learning might best be learned in the natural environment. Visually, babies may respond via computer to cause-effect results more than something else. Like the jack in the box effect (hey, whatever happened to jackinthboxes??). Or stack the blocks and watch them fall.

If I've not forgotten it is around 6 months that the majority of babies express their first belly laugh (find something truly funny, is how I understood this).

Erin