Designed by a speech-language pathologist for preschool-age children, General Eyes is a developmental game that builds the skill of category generalization to novel objects. Basically, this means learning that a common noun refers not just to one particular object, but to lots of other objects as well. This is a skill that can be especially challenging for children with autism spectrum disorders.
On the first screen, General Eyes presents an object and its category: for example, a flower, with the caption “touch the flower.” Then, the app presents a set of six objects, three of which also belong to the same category as the first object, and three of which do not, with the instruction to pick out all the objects that belong to the first category: “touch all of the flowers.” Picking out the objects that are in the same category, the child learns to generalize object categories using characteristics and attributes.
Large, easy-to-read captions can be read aloud by a parent or therapist using the app together with the child, encouraging the child’s engagement with their caretaker as well as with the app, and also encourage learning to read.
In the Lite version, you can work with the following groups of categories: animals and insects. The full version adds fruit, vegetables, clothing, furniture, musical instruments, plants, toys and transportation. You can turn on any combination of groups to work with.
Exceptionally good visual design makes this app a pleasure to use. For correct answers, the app provides natural reinforcements, consisting of over forty different sounds corresponding to each object category, as well as animations.
General Eyes keeps score of rounds played and percentage correct. There are two levels of difficulty: easy, where the objects mixed with the target objects are from completely random categories, and hard, where they are from related categories.
WHY PARENTS AND TEACHERS LOVE THIS APP:
-Beautiful, high quality images
-Variety of objects within categories — over 500 unique objects!
-Ability to track correct items
-Minimal background distractions, which makes it easy to use
WHY KIDS WILL LOVE IT TOO:
-Lifelike quality of images to keep children engaged
-Sound effects make children want to find the correct object to hear the sounds
-Huge variety of objects is interesting to discover
-This app is fun, simple and easy to use
About JiVe TherAppy:
JiVe TherAppy was created by a speech language pathologist and an app designer/developer. We strive to help therapists, educators and families with access to easily achieve age-appropriate developmental skills.