Longitudinal analysis of sustained performance on gamified cognitive assessment tasks

Abstract

Serious games aim to provide cognitive assessments that are more enjoyable and easier to self-administer, potentially leading to more frequent assessments. We carried out two studies examining the relationship between game-playing enjoyment, game difficulty, and cognitive (game) performance. In the first study, 16 participants played three serious games once a week over four weeks as part of an undergraduate course, but with relatively minor motivation in terms of course credits. In the second study, 14 participants played serious games over six sessions in a period of three weeks. Participants included graduate students receiving credit for the course project (a major component of the grade) and friends and family that they recruited. Performance in the more difficult tasks tended to improve over time in the second study, but not in the first. Participants from the first study showed an overall negative sentiment toward the games. However, participants from the second study enjoyed the majority of games except for the more difficult games that required players to temporarily hold and memorize information. Participants got significantly better in the more difficult working memory games, even though these games were less popular than the simpler games. Our interpretation of the results is that enjoyability is important in encouraging people to keep playing cognitive assessment games as time progresses, and that enjoyability helps in maintaining performance in easy games. Higher motivation on the other hand played a significant role in facilitating learning effects in difficult games as well as in maintaining enjoyability.

Keywords:

• Cognitive assessment
• enjoyability
• gamification
• longitudinal study
• serious games

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Scott Oxholm, who was the project manager of the BrainTagger development team at a critical stage of the project. We would also like to thank the BrainTagger software developers and in particular Ryan Chang, Thomas Macdonald, Rikin Gurditta, and Haoyan Jiang. This work was funded by AGE-WELL NCE Inc., a national research network supporting research, networking, commercialization, knowledge mobilization, and capacity building activities in technology and aging to improve the quality of life of Canadians and contribute to the economic impact of Canada.

Ethics approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Toronto, and the Tri-Council Statement on Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (https://ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique_tcps2-eptc2_2018.html). The study was approved by the University of Toronto Health Sciences Research Ethics Board (Ethics approval No. 41114).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by an AGEWELL NCE (CRP Catalyst 2019) research grant: "Ubiquitous Cognitive Assessment in the Aging Population" (AWCAT-2019-138).