YOCASTA: A ludic-interactive system to support the detection of anxiety and lack of concentration in children with disabilities

© 2017 IEEE. The World Health Organization (WHO) claims that depression and anxiety disorders cost the global economy US$1 trillion each year. Likewise, the anxiety in children can trigger different kind of educational issues such as attention difficulties, frustration, and in general, the school failure. This disorder can appear too in children with different kind of disabilities as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism, etc. For these reasons, in this paper we present a ludic-interactive system that provides support to detect behaviors/traits related with anxiety or lack of concentration in children with disabilities. Our proposal provides different kinds of ludic/educational activities as well as a data mining analysis module to support decisions making for psychologists and professionals of special education. In order to determine the real feasibility of the system, we have carried out a pilot experiment with 50 children (25 without and 25 with disabilities). The results provided by the system has validated by a team of psychologists.