Using a motion‐controlled game to teach four elementary school children with intellectual disabilities to improve hand hygiene.

HAND washing; PEOPLE with intellectual disabilities; PARENTS; SCHOOL children; SPECIAL education; VIDEO games; TASK performance; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; CHILDREN

Background: Individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) may have difficulties in performing daily living tasks. Among other daily living tasks, independent personal hygiene is an essential life skill for people with ID. Materials and Methods: Four children in a special education class participated in the experiment. We employed the Kinect V2 sensor to gamify hand washing. Specifically, a non‐concurrent multiple baseline design was adopted to demonstrate the relation between game‐based intervention and washing hands independently. Results: Data showed that the percentage of correct task steps increased among all four participants. Social validity results showed the parents considered the video game was very useful and it had helped their children learn the hand hygiene skills effectively. Conclusions: Although the game is a highly accepted training tool for school‐use, it currently remains error‐prone. A more technically robust system will likely result in higher participant motivation and task performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)