Gestural Interaction and Reading Skills: A Case of Study with People with Down Syndrome

Abstract

People with Down syndrome present cognitive difficulties that affect their reading skills. In this study we present results about the use of gestural interaction with Kinect sensor to improve the reading skills of students with Down syndrome. Following a case of study method for small samples with disabilities, measuring different variables related to reading skills in an experimental group and in a control group. We found improvements in the visual association, visual comprehension, sequential memory, and visual integration after this stimulation in the experimental group compared to the control group. Also, we found that the number of error and delay time of interaction decrease between sessions in the experimental group. learning (typical pre-school and school age) can be used with students with DS too (i.e. PBSkids 1 reading) or to working memory training (i.e. Cogmed 2 ).There are several specialties related with the reading teaching, such as the speech therapy, with continuous contributions of psycholinguistics [9]. Following Zubiría's theory [10], there are six levels of readings: phonetics, primary, secondary and tertiary decoding, categorical and "metatextual", leaving the first four levels as elementary and the last two as higher level. In our case, based on this theory, we have focus on secondary decoding, because it is the common level of reading in the DS population.Reading comprehension as a cognitive process gives meaning to the relevant ideas of a text and its relation to prior knowledge, in which working memory's executive processes play a crucial role. The process of memory assessment is given through brief stimuli called 'memory reconsolidation'. Relationship between response time (velocity) and a number of identified items aiming to expose how information is maintained in short term memory and why this memory has limited capacity [11]. The memory reconsolidation allows the reactivation and modification of memories by stimuli [12]. Its strength being inversely proportional to the age of memory [13]. Taking into account this context, in this study the variables time and cognitive errors were selected as a methodological basis to measure the variation of learning between periodic lessons.About the assessment, it allows teachers and educational system to undertake the best methodological and didactic strategies [14,15,16]. In students with DS, the assessment does not vary from the rest of the students in terms of measuring their achievement, measuring variables such as response time, successes and errors. However, it is important to consider the student's degree of error [17,18], or the continuous feedback to the process, motivating the effort of the student, not only the achievement [15]. In this work, the assessment process has been designed and supported by technical designers and teachers taking special characteristics of DS students. One of the most important dimensions in the assessment of teaching-learning process is probably the academic performance [19]. Academic performance can be assess...