Music Game For Children with Autism

Music Game For Autistic Children Unveiled At The University Of Abertay Dundee

A musical computer game to help children with autism learn and relax has been unveiled to the public at the Abertay Digital Graduate Show.

John Steven, a Creative Sound Production student at the University of Abertay Dundee, built a game designed to help autistic children learn about colour and shape recognition while also helping to keep them calm and focused.

The game works in a similar way to popular musical titles like Guitar Hero: different coloured shapes appear on screen, prompting the child to press a matching key.

Each of the different shapes plays a different chord, and when the right buttons are pressed a flower grows on the screen. The calming music and the positive reinforcement of showing success on screen is designed to be enjoyable and help autistic children develop independent learning skills.

John said: "I really wanted to use the creative skills I learnt at Abertay University to help children with learning difficulties, and giving them the opportunity to use music to learn and relax at any time felt like a really important thing to do.

"There's very little available in terms of interactive games for children with autism, which is a huge shame. By bringing together shape and colour learning with relaxing music and interactive play, I hope this project can make a real difference.

"Even though this is the end of my degree, I don't see the project ending at all. There's so much more work to do, from testing and developing the game further to finding a company to work with to build a prototype controller. This is just the start."

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