The Empower project has presented two of the nine games that will be developed by the project in order to work on executive functions with children with neurodevelopmental disorders: the Sustained Attention Game and the Memory Training Game.
The initiative aims to help students with neurodevelopmental conditions and will design different training materials and carry out several scientific studies aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
The Sustained Attention Game is based on a comprehensive continuous task designed to improve sustained attention function. This game will train the cognitive system to activate and maintain attention at an optimal level for extended periods of time, while inhibiting the response system.
The task consists of a long series of sequentially presented stimuli in which the participant must respond as quickly as possible only when a pre-specified target is presented, while withholding responses to other stimuli appearing on the screen.
This activity has three levels with three sub-levels each, where the main target is always a specific mushroom and the distracters change depending on the level. In addition, the position in which the stimuli can appear is different depending on the selected sublevel. Possible distractors include flowers, small branches, butterflies and other types of mushrooms.
The app monitors the child’s performance, measuring correct and incorrect responses both when the target is present and when it is not, and the response time for each trial (then calculating the average response time for the game).
As for the Memory Training Game, it is based on tasks that train the ability to dynamically modify memory content according to task requests. The proposal will assess and train children’s working memory by asking them to remember the sequence in which peppers change their colour from green to yellow in a set of pepper plants.
The first of the main tasks involved in the game is to sort the ripe peppers into the correct basket according to their quality: the pepper with worm should go into a specific basket to be cut and cleaned for later use, while the good pepper (without worm) should be collected in another basket to be sold later at the market.
Therefore, in the first task, the child should select the correct basket where the pepper should be picked to separate the good and bad peppers for the market. This should be done while the child is concentrating on the order in which the peppers change their colour to yellow.
The second of the main tasks is based on selecting the peppers from their plants in the correct order in which they turned yellow. Depending on the level, the child will see 2, 3 or 4 peppers changing colour and will then have to select the same number of peppers with the mouse trying to reproduce the correct sequence. The game will always have 9 pepper plants and the order in which the peppers change colour is completely random.
The app monitors the child’s performance, measuring correct and incorrect answers for both the sorting task and the order selection task. The response time for each trial (calculated from the average response time for the game) is also monitored.
IRTIC is in charge of the software development and ISCTE from Portugal and UBB from Romania, two of the project partners, are in charge of the definition of the exercises. The rest of the Empower consortium is made up of Stichting Radboud University in the Netherlands, the Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering in Portugal, Hogskulen pa vestlandet University in Norway and the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania, which are four university departments in the technology area specialising in artificial intelligence, eye-tracking and biosensors.
The Romanian company IT Data Telecom, responsible for the creation of training content, is also involved in the project. The Autism-Europe association, an organisation based in Brussels that brings together a hundred organisations from more than 40 European countries, completes this consortium by leading the dissemination of the project’s results.
In the month marking #AutismDay2023 on 2 April, the EMPOWER partners join Autism-Europe’s awareness-raising campaign “Building an inclusive society for autistic people”, an opportunity to reflect on the advances made so far for the autism community and the work that remains to improve the lives of autistic people and their families.
Neurodevelopmental conditions like autism affect approximately 15% of children aged 3 to 17 years. These children can have difficulties with language and speech, motor skills, behaviour, memory, learning, or other neurological functions.
These challenges can have a significant impact on their learning process, access to education, and consequently social inclusion. Children with neurodevelopmental conditions can thus greatly benefit from education support tailored to their needs.
In this regard, our project aims to create a novel educational platform, based on a game-based approach and new paradigms from psychology suggesting that executive function and emotional self-regulation are two key sets of skills to target in the educational support for neurodiverse students.
Autistic people can live included in their communities with appropriate support services. They should have access to diverse types and levels of support depending on their individual needs and strengths. They should also receive the appropriate level of support at various stages of their lives, including around diagnosis and key moments of transition in adulthood.
For the #AutismDay2023 campaign, we would like to emphasise the importance of approaching support services on a case-by-case basis and involve autistic individuals and their families in developing personalised support plans. To make this a reality, coherent policies and funding are needed across Europe and at the EU-level to empower people on the autism spectrum to live independently and participate in the community.
With its awareness-raising campaign “Building an inclusive society for autistic people” to mark World Autism Awareness Day 2023, Autism-Europe calls on European, national and regional policymakers and other stakeholders to ensure the full enjoyment of the rights and needs of autistic people in Europe, according to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). The UNCRPD has been ratified by 45 out of the 46 member countries of the Council of Europe (CoE), including by all EU member states and by the European Union itself in 2010.
To implement the UNCRPD at EU level, the European Commission launched in March 2021 its second Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which will run until 2030. Autistic people’s needs should be adequately addressed when implementing it in all areas, both at EU and Member States levels.
Autism-Europe prepared a document detailing aims and strategies of this #AutismDay2023 campaign, which will be carried out throughout April 2023 with different communication means and activities. Go through this toolkit to learn how you can engage in the campaign and download useful communication material!
The partners of the Empower project held a follow-up meeting on 27-28 March in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. During the meeting, the progress of all the work packages of the project was reviewed and the steps to be taken in the coming months were established.
This HorizonEurope project aims to help students with neurodevelopmental conditions who, together with teachers, psychologists and developers will co-design this platform in which eye-tracking technologies will be used together with other sensors. In this sense, the project will develop different training materials and carry out several scientific studies aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
The research team of the initiative works with the hypothesis that executive functions and emotional self-regulation are key to educational inclusion and academic learning, so its objective is to develop a technological platform for the assessment and training of these skills.
The consortium is formed by the University of Valencia, which coordinates this action from IRTIC, together with the Babes-Bolyai University in Romania and the University Institute of Lisbon in Portugal, two research centres specialised in special education and psychology; as well as with the University of Stichting Radboud in the Netherlands, the Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering in Portugal, the Hogskulen pa vestlandet University in Norway and the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania, which are four university departments in the technological area specialised in artificial intelligence, eye-tracking and biosensors.
The Romanian company IT Data Telekom, responsible for the creation of training content, is also involved in the project. The Autism-Europe association, an organisation based in Brussels that brings together a hundred organisations from more than 40 European countries, completes this consortium leading the dissemination of the project results.
The Research Executive Agency (REA) of the European Commission co-finances the project through the Horizon Europe Programme, having been selected in the “Inclusion in times of change” call, in the “Transformations” call of the aforementioned programme.
The launch of the EMPOWER project website is an important milestone, providing a central hub for project information, resources, updates and engagement with stakeholders.
Launch of the EMPOWER project set to address the educational needs of children with neurodevelopmental conditions
Led by the University of Valencia (Spain), EMPOWER is a new European interdisciplinary research project that will develop and deploy a unique technological learning platform to enhance the personalized education of children with neurodevelopmental conditions. Its main objective is to empower teachers to better support children in schools regarding their emotional and behavioural difficulties and ultimately improve their quality of life. Partners of the project have met at the IRTIC institute in Valencia this week to kick off its three-year work programme.
The members of the EMPOWER consortium held their first meeting on Tuesday 18th and Wednesday 19th October at the IRTIC facilities, in Valencia (Spain). During the meeting, the participating entities have discussed technical issues to be developed, the preparation of the necessary reports and the promotion of the initiative.
Neurodevelopmental conditions affect approximately 15% of children aged 3 to 17 years. These children can have difficulties with language and speech, motor skills, behaviour, memory, learning, or other neurological functions. These difficulties can have a significant impact on their learning, access to education, and in turn social inclusion. Children with Neurodevelopmental conditions can thus greatly benefit from education support tailored to their needs.
The recent pandemic has triggered a strong push to invest in technology-augmented education while highlighting major gaps and challenges in the area. Many questions currently remain open, including what technological abilities are useful in education according to specific needs, how can they be deployed, what are the training needs, and what public policies should govern this issue.
Over the next three years, EMPOWER will contribute to answering these questions by (1) developing novel technological support for the education of children with neurodevelopmental conditions, (2) developing adequate training for educational staff, and (3) issuing recommendations for the future regarding the potential and limitations of technology-augmented education to inform future developments.
EMPOWER will thus create a novel educational platform based on new paradigms from psychology that suggest that Executive Function and Emotional Self-Regulation are two key sets of skills to target in the educational support for students with Neurodevelopmental conditions. The educational platform will be co-created by all relevant stakeholders and will facilitate the improvement of these key skills in children. It is expected that by using a game-based approach, children will improve their learning and emotional skills, better integrate into the educational system, and improve their quality of life. The platform efficacy will be tested and evaluated in school settings according to the strict standards of a randomized clinical trial.
In addition to technological advances, the lessons learned from the development and deployment of this platform will provide valuable insights into the needs and possibilities for training teachers in the use of new technologies as well as input into future policies governing technology in education, including, in particular refined ethical frameworks.
Leading the EMPOWER consortium, the University of Valencia (Spain) will coordinate the transnational team made of a range of leading experts in their respective fields including from Radboud University (The Netherlands), Babeş-Bolyai University, the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca and the company ITDATA TELECOM (Romania), the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, INESC-ID and ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon (Portugal), as well as Autism-Europe (Belgium). The work of the consortium is co-funded by the Horizon Europe programme of the European Union.
