AN ARCHITECTURAL PLATFORM TO PROVIDE INTEGRAL

CARE FOR COGNITIVE IMPAIRED CHILDREN THROUGH

NEUROPEDAGOGICAL METACOGNITION

Carlo Emmanoel Tolla de Oliveira, Carla V. M. Marques, Cleonice Weber, Paula Prata

Núcleo de Computação Eletrônica, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Mariana Souza

Faculdade de Letras,Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro,Brasil

Keywords: Children, Games, Cognition, Neuroinformatic, Neuropedagogy, Metacognition, MCI, Interaction design,

Metacognitive design, Education.

Abstract: Some children require special education due impairment from deafness, blindness, abuse or mental

disabilities. This necessity must be carefully tracked, early and throughout their lives so to provide

assistance at critical life stages. An integrated education can largely benefit from a consistent architecture,

where many specific needs are catered for, while maintaining a fair base of commonalities. This work

describes a meta-architecture which has been employed to develop several neuropedagogical portals. This

architecture offers fine grained neuroinformatic data acquisition and processing, online educational game

development support with neuropsychological profiling. Neuropedagogical education offers a scientific

approach to the development of leaning abilities and the proposed architecture encompasses a guide to

achieve metacognitive design as an important asset in the installation of a rule-forming epistemic mind.

1 INTRODUCTION

Neuropedagogy is a recent science targeting the

correct development of mental abilities and integral

activation of all brain functionality. Inadequate brain

development can occur whit children suffering from

physiological impairment such as deafness and

blindness, traumatic experiences of abuse, violence,

negligence or even insufficient education.

Whichever are the reasons, the consequences are

usually severe and mostly irreversible, ranging from

cognitive underdevelopment to brain damage from

deactivated cerebral regions. All these risks to child

integrity must be accounted for, early detected and

promptly reacted upon to ensure that appropriated

measures are taken in due time to avoid compromise

of child future.

The cognitive functions are fundamental

structures that serve as foundation for all mental

operations. Thus, they are the essential components

for intellectual activity. These functions enable us to

understand, develop and express information. These

functions emerge from a careful trimming of brain

connections mainly through the process of learning.

The cognitive functions are the framework of

thought are continually being be structured, adapting

and accommodating the different modes of

interaction with the environment. Cognitive

functions are the key to observe, track and nurture

mental development, and every child, especially

from the risk groups should be provided with a

thorough program capable of assess and assist its

mental development.

Mental development is, however, very peculiar

to each individual and a general health program

capable of dealing with all the mental condition

details could incur in heavy investments in

specialized human resources, training and

maintenance. This is the point where

neuroinformatics can be applied to great avail,

delivering widespread cognitive testing, mental

development assistance and assessment of

therapeutic proceedings. Cheap computer stations

can make good use of non specialized local staff,

which with little training can conduct a whole

466

Emmanoel Tolla de Oliveira C., V. M. Marques C., Weber C., Prata P. and Souza M. (2009).

AN ARCHITECTURAL PLATFORM TO PROVIDE INTEGRAL CARE FOR COGNITIVE IMPAIRED CHILDREN THROUGH NEUROPEDAGOGICAL

METACOGNITION.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Health Informatics, pages 466-473

DOI: 10.5220/0001549704660473

 SciTePress

computerized health program. This program can

cover basic demographic and pediatric data,

collecting cognitive testing information, forwarded

to eliciting processes and returning therapeutic

interventions prescribed by specialists.

This work describes the neuroinformatic

architecture proposed jointly by a partnership of the

Laboratory of Cognitive Neuropsychology and

Neuroscience (NEUROLAB-INES) and

Neuroinformatics Laboratory at the Electronic

Computing Center of the Federal University of Rio

de Janeiro (Neurolog-REDE-NCE/UFRJ). This

architecture is being applied to several

neuroinformatic platforms for mental health care

such as TUIA (abused children) NEUROLOG-IBC

(blind) NEUROLOG-INES (deaf) and ESGRIMA

(public education). The platforms are fitted with

demographic data for children and support

neuropsychological testing and gaming for

neuropedagogical intervention. Those specialized

software programs are being developed as several

M.Sc. and B.Sc. works that follow and make use of

the architectural specifications.

The cognitive functions are fundamental

structures forming the base to whole mental

operations. So that, they are essentials components

to intellectual activity. Those functions qualify us to

perceive, to elaborate and express information. The

cognitive functions are the outline of the thought and

are continually structuring, adapting and

accomodating in the different interaction manners

with the environment.

Since cognitive styles are particularly configured

in each person, a wide plethora of learning strategies

should be considered for cater to each individual

requirement. In substitution to this costly approach,

psychological research has brought forward

metacognition as a more efficient solution.

Metacognition is a innate mental process controlling

the acquisition of knowledge and can be fairly

developed across individual particularities of

cognition process. This work proposes a

metacognitive architecture to convey

neuropedagogical interventions and improve the

cognitive development through metacognitive

design guidelines (Kirsh, 2005) and cognitive

modelling (Bandura).

Children usually present learning problems at

schools due to (among other reasons) the low

development of cognitive processes (Barkley, 2002),

(Rotta, 2006). This way, the construction of a

computer tool focused on the development of

cognitive processes (Eyesenck, 2005) is an essential

component in the psychopedagogic process and in

the total development1 of the child.

2 GOALS

This paper proposes a software architecture and an

efficient computer environment that helps children

among 7 to 12 years old with problems in

cognition's full development. Neuropedagogical

intervention largely relies on metacognition. This

works study metacognitive design as source of

learning acceleration and rule formation.

The metacognitive design becomes a crucial tool

in the construction of any computer environment

where the goal is to achieve metacognition, because

it is the individual's first contact with the

environment, becoming the essential link for the

conducting thread. A neuropedagogical intervention

based on these design principles, align itself with the

metacognition's goals.

Several educators have already highlighted the

importance of the child game as a help on the

development and child education. The game is a

great resource of development (Vygotsky, 2007),

since in the game universe the child smartens his/her

curiosity, models his/her acting, takes initiatives,

develops self-confidence, language, thoughts and

concentration. Activities with games permit to work

the liberty of choice, in which the child chooses for

living in some situation, works the imagination,

creativity, agility, reasoning, limits and language.

We rarely find a child who is not ready to participate

in a game, being it individual or in group, or in a

physical or mental activity. Nowadays it is defended

in a franc way that games are great stimulators of

mind and suggest a large cognitive commitment

since activate a diversity of sensorial and motor

cortexes (Johnson, 2005). This way, games propel

the construction and reorganization of cognitive

functions. Such interaction allows that the cognitive

functions (Papalia, 2000) be practised with more

intensity, favouring the discovery of new knowledge

ways (Piaget, 1971).

But how to outline the best design to compose

this structure? Which elements we could search to

understand the necessities of this space? Which is

the best computer architecture to sustain such

mechanism? Such questionings lead us to the

proposition of a system design and architecture of

system, as a way of reaching the individual

metacognition.

AN ARCHITECTURAL PLATFORM TO PROVIDE INTEGRAL CARE FOR COGNITIVE IMPAIRED CHILDREN

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2.1 CHI and Interaction Design

In the original concept of human machine interface

it was seen as a hardware device and the software

with which the human being and the computer could

communicate each other (Rocha, 2003). In short, the

interface was the link that made the communication

possible.

With the maturing o computing, a study area was

formed to produce an efficient model of

communication with the user. This was the starting

point to the area of Computer-Human Interaction

(CHI). This area studies the bridge (interface)

between electronic data and the human mind (Figure

1). Its purpose is to turn this communication as

natural as possible, as if it was a conversation with

another person (Amstel, 2004). The purpose of CHI

area is to create friendly interfaces (or user-friendly).

The CHI is a multidisciplinary area involving the

knowledge of areas such as Computer Science,

Psychology, Human Factors, Linguistic and other

ones. The CHI does not have in its body the goal of

studying the man or the computing, but the

communication between these two entities.

Figure 1: CHI - Computer-Human Interaction.

Going further, we find another approach that

tries to think over the effervescence of technology in

which nowadays we find us inserted, that is the

Interaction Design. Such approach goes beyond the

traditional CHI, because in this context the quest is

for experiences that target to improve and widen the

manner through which people communicate. This

way, interaction designers and usability engineers

get together to develop interactiveness for a new

generation of technologies. Managing such task

requires a set of varied abilities in areas like

Psychology, CHI, Web design, Computer Science,

Information Systems, Marketing, Entertainment and

Business (Figure 2) (Preece, 2005).

Figure 2: Interaction Design, Disciplines.

Interaction design is proposing ergonomic

solutions but not yet reached a point that has a focus

to objectively promote metacognition.

2.2 Metacognitive Design

A good design project tries to use efficient tools in

order to enable the manipulation of the complexity

that any virtual environment requires.

Jonassen (Jonassen, 1998) has already described

that the use of the computer as a cognitive tool,

assumes it as a mean of extracting what they know,

and endeavouring them in a critical thought about

the content worked. The designers help the users

providing tools, support, advertisements, and a

content of high quality. The success of a virtual

environment depends much on how the tools,

contents and support are implemented and visually

presented, not only being enough the simple fact of

being there (Gonçalves, 2005). A good visual design

can facilitate the learning, since it can improve the

metacognition (Kirsh, 2005).

Metacognition is seen much more as a process

that occurs isolatedly in the brain, than an interactive

process. Cognition and metacognition belong to a

continuous, and both are highly interactive (Figure

3).

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468

Figure 3: Cognition's and metacognition's process.

The way the suggestions are structured and the

way the interaction is designed, can make an

important difference in the facility and efficiency of

cognition and metacognition (Kirsh, 2005).

The art of the design is to restrict the visual clues

in each screen to a smaller set, in way that it signs

the next step to the user (Weinman, 1998). The

wisest do not reduce the complex processes to the

same levl of simplicity and intuition, however they

share the same goal. Designers must understand how

to fragment a system that is functionally complex in

a collection of systems functionally simple. It

requires ability and careful planning. The visual and

interaction design are related, because the final

purpose is to control how the user registers the next

step (Kirsh, 2005).

David Kirsh (Kirsh, 2005) defends that a well

designed layout facilitates the metacognition, and

enumerates some arguments, see below:

1 – Metacognition, as a first order cognition, is a

kind of established cognition; the interaction

individual-world can be more or less complex.

2 – The rhetoric of metacognition is about the

internal regulation, but the designers practice focus

on external sources.

3 – Good visual projects are cognitively

efficient. Good designs help managing the student

attention, and training to predict clues semantically

important, such as topic-phrases or useful summaries

since they are visually prominent. Good designs are

good because they are cognitively efficient.

4 – A good visual design establishes a good

work flow. Starting from the point that the user has

multiple tasks to do, he/she must be trained to use

the learned tools, as well as his/her expectations of

acknowledgment through exposition to

environments which are quite established.

5 – A good visual design is related to the

projection of a indicative structure. The clues are

more complex than the visual attractive. Some of

them serve as indicators, permitting the user to know

when he/she is close to his/her purposes.

Because of these principles (metacognitive

design), we have to look for an architecture model

that stands the requirements of the suggested

environment. Such environment needs to assure the

user a view which contains the metacognitive design

paradigms. This construction permits the existence

of a chapter focused on the development of the

access interface to the user. Such chapter does not

interfere on the control of appliance, nor on the flow

of appliance information.

Due to that, the best architecture to this case is a

model that fits three models that possess

independence, and also interact harmonically

between them along the process.

2.3 Proposed Architecture

In this paper we want to show the construction of a

neuroinformatic architecture translated from a

preexistent neuropedagogic model. Such model is

the basis for all the games that compound the

Attention Metacognitive Room, since all of them are

built through the principles of Guided Elaboration,

having as basis the Conducting Thread (Seminério,

1987). The Guided Elaboration is a technique of

metaprocess development of human cognition lead

through a mental flow named Conducting Thread.

This mental flow surrounds every possible

transformations that obey to the principles of

inflexible reasoning. This neuropedagogic process

was developed along twenty years of experimental

research by Professor Franco Seminério (Seminério,

1987).

The neuropedagogic modeling is made through

architecture based on the standard of Model View

Control (MVC) (Figure 4). MVC is an architecture

of development which purpose is separate the logic

of application (Model) from the interface of

information access to the user (View), and besides

that, from the application information flow

(Controller) (Gamma, 2005). This architecture

allows that the same logic of business can be

accessed, and even visualized for several interfaces.

The model entity is formed by elements that

represent the application data, that is, the game rules

based on Guided Elaboration e performed by the

Conductive Thread. These two parts that compound

the entity (5 – Game Rules and Conductive Thread),

they self-regulate according to the feedback received

from the player (3), or the Applier (4). This self-

regulation made by the Control entity is essential in

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Figure 4: Proposed Architecture.

order to keep a lock on the activity target,

configuring this way the main goal of the

neuropedagogic process. This target is transcribed to

the neuroinformatic model: work the necessities of

each player with the Guided Elaboration following

the principles of the Conductive Thread.

The model is installed to the player/child as

metacognitive games of attention using the

principles of metacognitive design. The View’s goal

is to accomplish the presentation of these data and

capture the user’s events. So, the essential self-

regulation to the process is installed on the Client

through API A, and this way, we can say that all

Cases of Study are not merely lead by the system

functionality, but by the neuropedagogic purpose of

the whole process.

The Control entity makes the connection

between the Model and the View, accomplishing the

treatment of the events, acting on Model, and

modifying the View to represent the situations

required by the neuropedagogical process.

The events captured by the API A are:

1 - Register of the date of Protocol Execution

2 - Time of Reaction (before being initiated the

first section)

3 - Time of Response (after the beginning of the

action up to the response)

4 - Number of correct answers

5 - Number of mistakes

6 - Number of perseverances (repetitive wrong

answers or number of repetitions)

7 - Order of answers execution

8 - Handling order of game's piece

9 - Number of plays (how many times the player

started the game)

10 - Register any kind of waive (observation: the

player may not want to start the game, stop in the

middle of any phase or not pass to the next phase).

Figure 5: client-patient and client-attendant.

2.3.1 Requirements Description

1) Application client-patient - It is divided in

four phases according to the principles of Guided

Elaboration.

1.1) First Phase - the child plays.

1.2) Second Phase- the attendant asks the child

to explain how did she/he played

1.3) Third Phase A (manipulating objects) - the

objects are shown exposed in a screen, and the child

has the possibility to move the characters/pranks the

way he/she desires. Child interactions are stored in a

data bank in order to be analysed later.

1.4) Third Phase B – the attendant asks the child

to tell what he/she did on the third phase (previous)

1.5) Fourth Phase (or mediation to the induction

of the rule) – the attendant through mediation will

ask the child to the play game in spoken words.

2) Application client-attendant - the attendant

has the possibility to register:

2.1) Child reactions along the game.

2.2) Record texts of comments according to what

is observing.

2.3) Make stimuli and to do interactions with the

child through the NPC (Non-player character)

picture during the game. All information are stored

in the data bank for a late analysis.

3 and 4) Server application-controls and offers

all services to the applications clients through a

Servlet, and call the components that treat the game

rules and persist on data bank.

The game engine is handled by the Phidias

library (http://code.google.com/p/phidias), a

byproduct of this architecture, designed to develop

neuropedagogical games. This library incorporates a

sprite engine with techniques that permit the visual

objects placed in the scenery game being sensitive

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470

Figure 6: Control Listener and Control Monitor.

to the mouse stimuli. The events occurred during the

game, that is, the interactions from the patient with

the game are captured through mouse stimuli inside

the game scenery, and also the actions with sprites.

According to the game phase in which the player is,

the events can be captured or not. The captured ones

are sent to the attendant view in order he/she can

monitor the patient’s moves.

Figure 7: Rules of the game and Database.

Between the server and the applet clients the

communication is made through the HTTP protocol,

using Java Servlet technology.

The architecture of the platform follows the

schemata shown previously on picture 4. They are

three client applicatives: one to the patient who will

play, another to the attendant, and the third one to

the psychologist who will analyse the patient results

later.

The developed platform defines engines that will

be used by the games to be developed. There is one

engine to games with bidimensional images, that is

already prepared to the treatment of events, and one

engine of forms that will be used by the attendant to

follow the patient session. Besides that, the structure

to data collecting and processing is defined in the

architecture, and will be added with a analysis of

each game, to interpret the stored data.

3 IMPLEMENTATIONS

ASSESSMENT

The Phidias's framework is a open-source client-

server platform that is being oriented as thesis M.Sc.

associated with this work. Its development was

based on the architecture described in this work

whose purpose is to promote metacognition.

The Phidias is composed of a set of packages

(Figure 8) with the task of making possible the

conduction of metacognitive interaction.

Figure 8: Diagram Package.

The games developed by Project Kuarup 2008

(http://kuarup2008.pbwiki.com) have as a goal to

work cognitive function of attention (Figure 9).

These games have been implemented with the

framework Phidias.

Figure 9: Kuarup’s Project games.

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The first requirement for development of these

games was to build an interface based on the

principles of metacognitive design (Kirsh, 2005).

The visual project supported its construction in a

number of client packages of Phidias, which

supports the development of an appropriate interface

to metacognition. All the elements that composes the

scenario of the game (parts and board) have been

implemented using the Graphic package. In Phase 1

of the Guided Elaboration all visual elements are

placed on the screen (Figure 10). This is the first

contact with the child's game. The applicator starts

the mediation of the game guided by the principles

of Guided Elaboration. It makes contact with the

child through the NPC figure of fun. The NPC is that

the means the attendant has to target and stimulate

the child.

In Phase 1 of the Guided Elaboration

(Seminério, 1987) the NPC asks the child to start the

game.

Figure 10: Botocudos's game (Kuarup's Project 2008) in

Phase 1 of the Guided Elaboration.

The Graphic package provides the static

elements of the game in order to compose the scene,

which may conflict or not with the sprites. The term

Sprite is well known in the business of game

development. Sprite is a term used to refer to an

element composed of a visual image, which can be

moved by the player across the screen independent

of other elements. The sprites of the games are

implemented by the Sprite client package. Each

element is coupled to a set of sprite events, such as:

identification of the sprite selected, the sprite

dragging time interval, the withdrawal of sprite

handling by the child, the sprite collision with

another static element or other sprites, position

where the player left the sprite in the scenario

(Figure 11), etc. The events identified are captured

and stored in the database t for future analysis. The

Phidias platform is highly customizable and flexible.

This makes possible that new events are mapped for

future neuropedagogical needs.

Figure 11: Moving parts of the board in Phase 1.

There is a possibility that every visual element

that make up the scenario run through some

treatment, so that it is in accordance with the

requirements of metacognitive design. This can be

done through the Filter client package. This package

offers options for treatment of the image, such as:

zoom, brightness, contrast and size.

Throughout the implementation of the

conductive thread the client captures the data and

forwards to the server for storage, receiving an

adequate stimulus in response. That dynamic is

carried through a protocol of communication

between the Client and Server. The Client and

Server communicates through its agents (Java

agent). The Client agent layer capture data to be

stored in a relational database. In turn, the agent in

Server stores this information in the database, does

the analysis and returns the client feedback to the

agent, so that it can interpret and generate some

stimulus. This set of actions is done through the

Control layer, responsible for bidirectional

communication between the client and server agents.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The main goal of this study is to develop and apply

this metacognitive platform all around Brazil, since

it was the result of a long term research on brazilian

children reality.

The building of the Neurolab-INES platform

makes possible the study of attention problems in

deaf children, who before this initiative did not have

adapted tools for such purposes, leaving this specific

population forgotten for this health care.

The advantage of this environment being

constructed in a computer system is making easier

the usage/application of it, offering a certain kind of

cognitive training non existent before to the

population of deaf children.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The development of this architecture was only

possible with the mutual efforts of several students

and teachers of PPGI, Program of Pos-Graduation in

Informatics at NCE-UFRJ, Núcleo de Computação

Eletrônica da Universidade Federal do Rio de

Janeiro, in special those participants in the courses

and the research line of Neuropedagogy and

Neuroinformatics.

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