An approach to cognitive evaluation using games on TV

Introduction: The recent advances in consumer electronics paved the way for new approaches to neurophysiological evaluation at home. More specifically, the computing capabilities of state-of-the-art television sets and media centres facilitate the introduction of computer-assisted evaluation at home. This approach helps to overcome the drawbacks of traditional pen-and-paper evaluations administered in clinical facilities, as they can be performed in a more comfortable environment, the subject’s home, and they are more flexible to elaborate complex environments for the evaluation of neuropsychological constructs that are difficult to evaluate through traditional testing. The objective of this work was to develop a collection of games to be played on the TV to obtain some initial evidence about the convenience of this approach for the cognitive evaluation of senior adults.

Materials and methods: We developed a collection of games to be deployed on a smart TV environment. These games were tried by a group of senior adults at their homes. Perception surveys were performed to study their usability and acceptability as a means for cognitive evaluation.

Results: More than 90% perceive cognitive games on TV as easy or very easy to interact with, and this result correlates with the number of participants perceiving them as usable or very usable.

Limitations: Although participating users were carefully selected to obtain a representative sample of the Galician population. A larger and more diverse user sample may be needed to obtain significant results for a wider population profile.

Conclusion: The study confirmed the usability and acceptance of games as a means of cognitive evaluation. Nevertheless, more research is needed in order to implement serious games in a way that they are widely accepted by the medical community as a valid, reliable way to perform cognitive evaluation at home.