Impact of exergames and game elements on cerebral palsy children: resistance and sound

Abstract

This paper reports the impact of exergame augmented physiotherapy along with varied gaming and therapy elements for the habilitation of the children with Cerebral Palsy. The gaming environment creates a platform for children to engage physically with exergames. The lower provided via a Kinect sensor, and game theory maps input to the visual game avatar. We tested the performance of seven children with cerebral palsy while playing exergames and recorded the mixed method data. The overall gaming experience was enjoyable for the children. Six out of seven children initially found it enthusiastic to cope with the challenges of exergames with gradually increasing speed and constant resistance thus improving their involved muscle strength but lost attention when they started to get tired. Our results indicate that children were willing to play the game they liked for increased time-period and time taken to complete each game decreased over the passage of sessions.