Digital play therapy for children with developmental disorders

Abstract

Children suffering with learning and developmental disorders require daily training to develop their social skills. However, such daily training is sometimes not provided because it requires interactive help from therapists, and lots of programs required for the training. In this paper, we propose a digital dollhouse that enhances traditional psychological play therapy with digital sensors and computer graphics (CG). The digital dollhouse provides immersive space for children, which develops their communication skills through their imaginary play through the complement of CG for enhancing the understanding of their situation. In this paper we present details of this prototype digital dollhouse. We also categorize requirements for digital play therapy, which are given by psychological viewpoints based on the prototype. Interdisciplinary design processes collaborating with engineers and psychologists show the possibility that digital dollhouses will be used for enhancing the communication, and providing the variety of training program that was difficult to prepare compared with the existent normal therapy devices.