McKenna Watcher 9443029 Are video games a new form of therapy for those who suffer
from Velopharyngeal Dysfunction?
Video games have consistently been illustrated as having more consequences for users
than benefits. This new study has shown quite the opposite effect. According to a variety of
studies that use video games as a form of therapy, video games can provide a platform for
rehabilitation of speech disorders. The speech disorder that is observed in this particular study is
Velopharyngeal Dysfunction or VPD. VPD is described in the study as a resonance disorder that
can result from lack of appropriate closure and/or opening between the nasal and oral cavities,
the velopharyngeal port, during speech tasks. VPD can be structural, neurological, or functional
in origin. The study asserts that when VPD is caused by structural or neurological anomalies,
rehabilitation usually involves surgical or prosthetic intervention. However, when VPD is
functional in origin due to hearing impairment or otherwise, speech therapy may be an effective
treatment. In order to determine possible treatments for those with VPD, this study used a video
game-based therapy format. In this case study, the sample consisted of five male participants
aged 4-15 years old who were diagnosed with VPD. Each participant was recruited based on age,
VPD severity and VPD etiology. Each participant was introduced to this video game therapy in
various environments and within different time frames. The video game-based therapy format
provided researchers with interactive feedback regarding the speech nasalization measured from
nasal accelerometry. For the study, the participants completed multiple weeks of individual game
play with this video game. All five participants completed both a pretraining and post training
assessment of nasalization. Additional measures such as nasalance and expert auditory
perception of hypernasality were also collected in order to ensure accuracy. This study found that
four out of five participants demonstrated a tendency toward decreased nasalization after
