Movement‐to‐music computer technology: a developmental play experience for children with severe physical disabilities

Abstract

Children with severe physical disabilities often lack the physical skills to explore their environment independently, and to play with toys or musical instruments. The movement-to-music (MTM) system is an affordable computer system that allows children with limited movements to play and create music. The present study explored parents' experiences of using the MTM system with their children. A qualitative methodology employing in-depth interview techniques was used with six mothers and their children. The themes extracted from the data were organized under two main concepts of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) (WHO, 2001) framework. The results showed that the MTM expanded horizons for the child along the ICF health dimensions and the MTM had a positive impact on ICF environmental determinants of health. The small sample size should be noted as a limitation of this study. Further research should be carried out with a larger sample of children with restricted mobility to obtain a better understanding of the impact of MTM technology on children's psychosocial development.

Can Music Influence Language and Cognition?

“…The VMI TM Virtual Music Instrument is a noncontact, computer vision-based interface that allows individuals with varying levels of mobility to create pleasing musical sounds in response to movement of any part of the body. Through several years of technology development, usability tests with children and families (Ahonen-Eerikäinen et al, 2008;Chau et al, 2006;Tam et al, 2007) and beta-tests in rehabilitation centres in eight different countries (Canada, United States, Australia, Taiwan, Philippines, Brazil, Netherlands and the United Kingdom), the VMI TM has evolved into a general physical rehabilitation tool with wide-reaching appeal. The Smarterkids training (SKT) is a musical training software that is based on recent scientific studies in which music is used to develop cognitive functions such as attention, working memory, language, reading and intelligence.…”

A field study with primary school children on perception of social presence and interactive behavior with a pet robot

“…Usually this simply means that is is more effective in a therapeutic or educational sense, when it is liked more. Of course, this is the case with technology in general [14,15] but robotic systems differ from other technologies, because they concern technology that is not always perceived just as such: a robot can be (partly) perceived as a social actor, and it could be that interaction with it follows the same *Research supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education through the project SOFIA (TIN2011-28854-C03-01,03) J. Albo-Canals, A. Barco, and C. principles as interpersonal communication rather than those of human-machine interaction. This is often found to show in the behavior of people interacting with robots ( [16].…”

MotionComposer: un dispositivo que convierte el movimiento en música

“…MIDIGRID (Kirk et al, 1994), ORFI (Stensaeth & Ruud, 2014), WaveRider (Paul & Ramsey, 2000) and the Movement-to-music (MTM) system (Tam et al, 2007) are examples of other tools that turn movement into music (using non video-based technologies).…”