Eventaurs is a game-based intervention designed to elicit language skills in non-verbal children with autism spectrum disorder.
My role was initially solely focused on improving the first version of Eventaurs, created by Graham Sortino. I was then asked to create a series of new touchscreen software applications for use in other cognitive science experiments at the Human Cognitive Development Lab, all lead by senior lecturer, and now Honorary Fellow, Dr Margaret McGonigle.
I incorporated many improvements to Eventaurs, ranging from bug fixes, code documentation and refactoring through to creating new levels, recording voice prompts in a studio and integrating them into the game. During this work, I also to contributed to ideas generation, research design, requirements analysis, and advised on hardware purchases.
The system was successful in eliciting language skills in many of the children and the results were published in a leading peer-reviewed journal in autism research. Speech therapists have since expressed an interest to use the system in their practice. The other applications that I also created formed the basis for three undergraduate projects examining visual perception and working memory.
Read more about Eventaurs on Dr McGonigle's homepage
Dr Margaret McGonigle (lead), Stephen Elphick (animations), Graham Sortino (programming), Joanna Fleming and Ben Alderson-Day (testing)