The Gamification Elements Speech-Language Pathologists Use to Motivate Children for Speech Therapy Training

Abstract

Motivation is an important factor in paediatric speech therapy. Rehabilitation is often long-term work that requires many repetitions and home training with parents. Therefore, one of the most important tasks of paediatric speech-language pathologists (SLPs) is to find different ways, over and over again, to motivate children for training. As different types of games themselves have already been identified as important motivational tools used by SLPs, the purpose of this study was to investigate what kind of gamification elements SLPs use in therapy, in addition to the games themselves, to motivate children for training. 26 Finnish SLPs responded to an online questionnaire consisting of four open-ended questions. Our results indicate that SLPs typically use several different motivational methods, which they aim to personalize as much as possible to individually support motivation. SLPs make a special effort to increase children’s intrinsic motivation by employing motivational features commonly used in gamification, such as playfulness, the child’s own interests, and goal setting.