Impact of game mode in multi-user serious games for upper limb rehabilitation: a within-person randomized trial on engagement and social involvement.
Fábio Pereira, Sergi Bermúdez I Badia, Rúben Ornelas and 1 others
PMID 31470877WHAT IT FOUND
Engagement did not differ across competitive, co-active, and collaborative game modes.
In collaborative play, healthy older adults reported more empathy and more involvement with their partner than in the other modes.
Key findings
01Engagement did not differ across competitive, co-active, and collaborative game modes.
02The collaborative mode was reported with higher empathy and higher behavioral involvement than the competitive and co-active modes.
03Subgroup analyses suggested greater behavioral involvement in collaborative mode among participants with higher cognitive screening scores and more extroverted participants.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The participants were healthy older adults without motor deficits, not stroke survivors, so the results do not show what would happen in patients receiving rehabilitation. The outcomes were self-reported game experience, not clinical rehabilitation outcomes. It was a convenience sample of 39 analysed participants from one community center. The game conditions were short and not adapted to performance, and challenge ratings were low. Questionnaires were read aloud because of the sample's characteristics. No open-ended questions were included to capture participants' preferences or reasons. Several subgroup comparisons were made, including cognitive score, personality, and relationship.
Declared interests
Funding was listed as MACBIOIDI and LARSyS. The supplied article does not report further author conflict-of-interest statements.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that collaborative serious games improve stroke rehabilitation. This trial tested healthy older adults without motor deficits and measured game experience, not clinical recovery; the authors state the results cannot be assumed to generalise to stroke survivors.