CopyCat: An American Sign Language game for deaf children

• Published in: Face and Gesture 2011 p. 647
• Main Authors: Zafrulla, Zahoor, Brashear, Helene, Presti, Peter, Hamilton, Harley, Starner, Thad
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.03.2011
• ISBN: 1424491401; 9781424491407
• DOI: 10.1109/FG.2011.5771325

The CopyCat game is an interactive educational adventure game to help deaf children improve their language and memory abilities. As part of the CopyCat project, several computer-assisted language learning games have been designed, one of the games "Alien" is shown in Figure 1. Each game entails some sort of quest by the hero to collect items in order to solve a problem. In each quest, the child interacts with the hero (Iris the white cat) via American Sign Language (ASL) to warn her of a villain or identify where a hidden object is located. The child may view the tutor repeatedly if they so choose (see Figure 1). After the child talks to the hero, the child's signing is classified as correct or incorrect. If the child's signing is incorrect, a question mark appears above the hero's head to simulate misunderstanding by the hero, and the child must try again to communicate accurately. If the child's sign is correct, the hero, with the wave of a paw, "poofs" the villain, turning it into an innocuous item, and the hero continues on the quest.