BCI for Assessing the Emotional and Cognitive Skills of Children with Special Educational Needs

This research aims to improve the pedagogical rehabilitation of children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) based on play-like activities for orientation in space, shapes, colors and emotions. The designed EEG-based portable Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) measures and features in real time the brain signals in order to analyze the attentional or emotional states of a child. The output performance scores are used either as an input control in the play scenarios or to facilitate the assessment of the emotional states and cognitive performance of a child by special educators. The proposed integration of BCI with programmable robots assists in creating an engaging environment for learning skills by imitation and forming alternative BCI training session adapted to children with SEN. The concept of added BCI into the play-like activities evolves into technology for self-regulatory training of emotional or cognitive skills via neurofeedback exposed on the robot. A low resolution EMOTIV brain-listening headset is used to translate the current child brain activity into robot commands in real time. Then, they are wirelessly transmitted to robot sensors, modules and controllers and consequently used as an input neural control. Thus, the attention or positive emotional responses of children with SEN are reinforced.