Effects of Active Video Gaming on Pre-handwriting Skills of Children With Down Syndrome.

Down's syndrome is a genetic disorder caused by trisomy 21. Down's syndrome is most common genetic mental disability that affects children physically, mentally and functionally. It occurs due to an extra copy of chromosome 21. It involves a slightly flattened facial profile, low muscle tone upward-slanted eyes, and ligamentous laxity. Central hypotonia, mental retardation and short stature are very common features of children with down's syndrome. Children with down's syndrome are characterized by awkward movements, gait, increased flexibility of joints, timing of mastering of basic skills and , under-development of fine motor skills. Active video gaming used different games that involve interactive session that can enhance cortical recognition, motor learning and functional profile of children with DS. The objective of this study is to determine the effects of active video gaming on pre-hand writing skills of children with down's syndrome. This will be a RCT(Randomized Controlled Trial).The sample size was 18 and the study design was a case-control trial. The inclusion criteria are children with down syndrome age 6 to 12 years both male and female patients are randomly selected and children with poor pre-hand writing skills. And the exclusion criteria for this study is children with any other neurological condition like (epilepsy, instability of atlantoaxial joints, cardiac anomalies,) vision, and hearing loss. Two groups were randomly assigned and equally divided patients into each group. Group A received pre-handwriting skills, like tracing alphabets and numbers, scribbling, coloring, painting, and group B received active video gaming and prehandwriting skills. For measuring each group developmental coordination

disorder questionnaire tool is used. The session will be taken 30 mins thrice a week for (8consecutive weeks). Data collected from different centers, Raising sun institute of special education. Autism resource center Lahore. SPSS for Windows software, version 25 will be used to analyze the data using statistical Significance p=0.05. The Shapiro-Wilk test will be used to check the normality of data. Keywords: Active video gaming, Down syndrome, Computer game, Fine motor skills, Pre-hand writing skills, Virtual reality gaming.