Paper Presented at the Web for All Conference in Perth, Australia M. Rauschenberger, L. Rello, R. Baeza-yates, E. Gomez, and J. P. Bigham, “Towards the Prediction of Dyslexia by a Web-based Game with Musical Elements,” w4a, pp. 4–7, 2017. The generated musical elements are available at http://bit.ly/2jeejmC The demo of the prototype DysMusic is available at http://bit.ly/DysMus More Project can be found on www.mariarauschenberger.com Abstract: Current tools for screening dyslexia use linguistic elements,since most dyslexia manifestations are related to difficulties in reading and writing. These tools can only be used with children that have already acquired some reading skills and; sometimes, this detection comes too late to apply proper re-mediation. In this paper, we propose a method and present DysMusic, a prototype which aims to predict risk of having dyslexia before acquiring reading skills. The prototype was designed with the help of five children and five parents who tested the game using the think aloud protocol and being observed while playing. The advantages of DysMusicare that the approach is language independent and could be used with younger children,i.e., pre-readers.

1. Towards the Prediction of Dyslexia by a
Web-based Game with Musical Elements
Maria Rauschenberger1
Luz Rello2
Ricardo Baeza-Yates1
Emilia Gomez1
Jeffrey P. Bigham2
1Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
2Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, USA

2. Contributions
• New indicators for predicting dyslexia while playing a Game
called DysMusic.
• Usability improvements to the first version of the game.
2
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3. Outline
1. Motivation
2. Why Musical Elements?
3. Content Design
4. User Study & Results
5. Conclusions & Future Work
3
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4. Motivation
4

5. Motivation - Dyslexia
• What is dyslexia?
• How many are affected?
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6. Motivation - Dyslexia
• Who is affected?
• How does dyslexia affect
your life?
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7. Examples of Digital Detection: Pre-Readers
• DYSL-X / DIESEL-X (Geurts et al. 2015, Audenaeren 2013)
• Bielefelder Screening(Steinbrink and Lachmann 2014)
• AGTB 5–12 (Steinbrink and Lachmann 2014)
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Fig. DYSL-X game
(Audenaeren 2013)

8. Dyslexia is normally detected using linguistic elements.
That can only be possible when children have already developed
reading skills.
Is it possible to predict that a child may have dyslexia before
s/he develops reading skills?
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9. 9
Why Musical Elements?

10. Indicators
• Short-term memory difficulties
• Phonological memory / awareness
• Working memory
⇒ For Readers and Pre-Readers
DysMusic
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K. Overy. Dyslexia, Temporal Processing and Music: The
Potential of Music as an Early Learning Aid for Dyslexic
Children. Psychology of Music, 28(2):218–229, oct 2000.
R. F. Port, “Meter and speech,” J. Phon., vol. 31, pp.
599–611, 2003.

11. Goals
• Finding dyslexia pre-readers indicators related to music
• Integration of successful items in a game to predict and
intervene dyslexia
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12. 12
“What do you hear?”
Content Design

13. Tasks Related to Indicators
• Finding the same sound
• Distinguishing between sounds
• Short time interval perception, e.g.
short-time intervals
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Huss, M., Verney, J. P., Fosker, T., Mead, N., &
Goswami, U. (2011). Music, rhythm, rise time
perception and developmental dyslexia:
Perception of musical meter predicts reading and
phonology. Cortex, 47(6), 674–689.

14. Example of One Musical Element (Rhythm)
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15. Game DysMusic
DysMusic
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Fig. DysMusic
@Rauschii | www.mariarauschenberger.com
Video-Demo on the next page
Link to the Video
Link to the Demo

16. 16

17. Example
• 4 tasks, each with 2 subtasks
• One subtask with 4 cards,
the other with 6 cards
• 4 different acoustic parameters
• Frequency
• Length
• Rise Time
• Rhythm
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Huss, M., Verney, J. P., Fosker, T., Mead,
N., & Goswami, U. (2011). Music, rhythm, rise
time perception and developmental dyslexia:
Perception of musical meter predicts reading and
phonology. Cortex, 47(6), 674–689.
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2010.07.010

18. 18
User Study & Results

19. Usability Study
• 5 users study
• five children (user) and five parents
• within-subject design, counter-balanced
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J. Nielsen. Why You Only Need to Test with 5
Users. Jakob Nielsens Alertbox, 19 (September
23):1–4, 2000.

20. Results
• Interaction:
• After first task, they go faster, independent of the musical
element
• Musical Elements
• Listen and concentrate carefully
• Difficult level difference perception
• Functionality
• Video player ( HTML 5: video-tag to YouTube: Iframe-tag)
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21. Conclusions & Future Work
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• Language independent
• Could be for pre-readers
• Visual Elements
• Large-scale study in
English, German & Spanish

22. Prediction of Dyslexia with
Musical Elements
while playing a Serious Game
Thank you!
Any Questions?
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23. Backup
23

24. Musical
Elements
DysMusic
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