teaching the blind to find their way by playing video games教盲人找到玩视频游戏.pdfVIP

Teaching the Blind to Find Their Way by Playing Video Games 1 1 2 ´ 3 Lotfi B. Merabet *, Erin C. Connors , Mark A. Halko , Jaime Sanchez 1 Department of Ophthalmology, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 2 Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Department of Neurology Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 3 Department of Computer Science and Center for Advanced Research in Education (CARE), University of Chile, Santiago, Chile Abstract Computer based video games are receiving great interest as a means to learn and acquire new skills. As a novel approach to teaching navigation skills in the blind, we have developed Audio-based Environment Simulator (AbES); a virtual reality ¨ environment set within the context of a video game metaphor. Despite the fact that participants were naıve to the overall purpose of the software, we found that early blind users were able to acquire relevant information regarding the spatial layout of a previously unfamiliar building using audio based cues alone. This was confirmed by a series of behavioral performance tests designed to assess the transfer of acquired spatial information to a large-scale, real-world indoor navigation task. Furthermore, learning the spatial layout through a goal directed gaming strategy allowed for the mental manipulation of spatial information as evidenced by enhanced navigation performance when compared to an explicit route learning strategy. We conclud