Tuesday, February 27, 2007

LINKX Links Play and Language for Autistic Children

Filed under: Pediatrics , Psychiatry

Helma van Rijn, a student at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, has developed an electronic toy, called LINKX, for autistic children. The idea is to advance language development by playing with speech-o-grams. Ms. van Rijn explains on her website:

My project resulted in the concept design LINKX. LINKX aims to learn autistic children the words of objects in their own environment. This helps them learn the meaning of words. This is done by means of speech-o-grams (pictograms with sound added to it). Parents record words inside them and attach them to objects before play starts.

Children can link blocks to these speech-o-gram. Each link results in lights that go on and a sound that is played. The sound moves into the block. You can link blocks and speech-o-grams over and over and this will eventually make them remember the word.

You can also link blocks together. When one block owns a sound, it will move to the other block. Again doing this again and again will stimulate language learning.

Delft University of Technology press release...

Project page...

Video (.mov)...

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