HEIDI Expressions Test Game

The Heidi Expressions Test Game has been developed to improve early evaluation of vision for communication. Among the vision impaired children there are some who cannot see expressions and/or do not recognize people by their faces. These children may have nearly normal results in routine vision tests (i.e. large visual field and normal or near normal visual acuity.) Other vision impaired children may have this deficit in visual recognition as a part of more extensive loss of visual functions. Many children have Cerebral Palsy, which may be so mild that it has not required special treatment. If the child's difficulties are not known and understood, his/her behavior may cause misunderstandings and needless negative experiences in social interactions. Therefore, testing of a child's ability to see differences among different facial expressions is an important part of functional visual assessment. Vision impaired children have two different kinds of problems in learning to recognize faces and to interpret: *they do not see expressions well enough to interpret them (=pathway problem) or *they have brain damage in the area of face recognition and, therefore, do not recognize differences in people's faces and may also have difficulties in interpreting expressions (= cognitive visual problem). These children are unable to gather information related to faces from the visual information entering the brain because the normal Top-Down demand for face information does not exist. They are unaware of faces. These children should be diagnosed early so that we can use other functions to support their development in communication. The Heidi Expressions Test Game should be included in the assessment of early visual processing whenever a child has symptoms of face blindness. Product number: #254505 For more information, email [email protected] or go to http://www.lea-test.fi/index.html?start=en/vistests/instruct/heidiexp/heidi.html