CHIMELIGHT: Augmenting Instruments in Interactive Music Therapy for Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders

In this paper, we propose a new mobile system to support therapists for teaching and tracking socio-communicative behaviors in children with neurodevelopmental disorders during music therapy sessions. The CHIMELIGHT system was designed to deal with the current issues in conventional therapies, such as the difficulty in both evaluating the performance and maintaining engagement of these children during therapeutic activities. The system evaluated movements made by a child with neurodevelopmental disorders playing a musical instrument while delivering contingent visual feedback based on real-time motion analysis. A set of metrics was implemented to evaluate the performance during the therapy activity and quantify specific target behaviors. An evaluation study performed during music therapy group sessions showed that the CHIMELIGHT-delivered visual feedback increased the engagement of children in the activity and decreased targeted negative behaviors. In some participants, we observed potential changes in their positive behaviors. Interviews and questionnaires provided to therapists showed that the developed system was effective for supporting evidence-based music therapy. Accordingly, our research enables new methods for both interactive therapy and mediation of the interaction between therapists and children with neurodevelopmental disorders.