The computer game, produced by the Baltimore-based company Learning for Children and released this week, is one of a spate of high-tech toys being designed to help treat–and in this case even screen for–developmental disorders. Since disabilities can severely stifle social development in children, experts like Daniel Bogen at the University of Pennsylvania say that toys can act as a social lubricant for disabled kids who might otherwise sink into isolation.
An associate professor of bioengineering, Bogen has developed musical instruments with motion sensors and error-correction software for kids with cerebral palsy and brain injuries. The children will soon be able to operate percussive instruments using an array of body movements–such as tilting one’s head or blowing into a tube–that trip special sensors. Bogen hopes to have a performance band of disabled kids assembled by next spring. “We’ve put together the system,” he says. “But we haven’t jammed yet.”
Experts caution that the games–there is also one aimed at screening children for dyslexia–should not replace traditional exams and therapy with a clinician. Catherine Lord, director of the University of Michigan Autism & Communication Disorders Center, is especially concerned with the prospect of home screening products for autism. “I think that everybody can sympathize with a family’s impulse to try to get information themselves,” she says. “[But] autism is a very complex disorder.”
