Review Article

Application of Digital Games for Speech Therapy in Children: A Systematic Review of Features and Challenges

Table 6

Challenges and obstacles of speech therapy games.

#Challenges and obstaclesStudies

1Sense of frustration and low self-esteem of children due to the lack of voice recognition or progress in playing game[14, 39, 44, 47]
2Ambient and environmental noise that affected the game performance[30, 32, 33, 49]
3Contradiction between game levels and the needs of target groups (the game was very difficult or too easy)[14, 21, 52]
4The game was challenging because it required two hands to play[14, 21]
5Children could not easily read words or phrases due to inadequate instruction[14, 31]
6Not all participants were willing to wear the headset microphone[14, 42]
7Delays in speech recognition[40, 43]
8The game did not recognize low tune voices, and children had to speak loudly[30, 31]
9The designed game did not provide feedback on accepting or rejecting children’s voices[31]
10One of the challenges at design phase was that each target phrase or word had to be carefully crafted to fit into the narrative of the game and this was very time-consuming, which could result in minimal content[31]
11Negative beliefs of SLP due to unavailability of games for their professional needs[32]
12Internet connection restrictions in client-server architectures[34]
13The games had no “levels”[14]
14The children found the record buttons difficult to manage and required multiple screen taps[14]
15Immobility of the system due to Kinect dependence[43]
16Different accents led to the lack of voice recognition[43]
17The proposed games were heavily dependent on the instructors[46]
18Problem in syllable detection in real time[47]
19Disagreement between clinician and the game in terms of the correct pronunciation of sounds[52]
20Young children could not work with the designed games[29]