Citation

van der Kuil MNA, Visser-Meily JMA, Evers AWM, van der Ham IJM. Front. Psychol. 2018; 9: e846.

Affiliation

Department of Health, Medical and Neuropsychology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Frontiers Research Foundation)

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00846

PMID

29922196

PMCID

PMC5996119

Abstract

Acquired brain injury patients often report navigation impairments. A cognitive rehabilitation therapy has been designed in the form of a serious game. The aim of the serious game is to aid patients in the development of compensatory navigation strategies by providing exercises in 3D virtual environments on their home computers. The objective of this study was to assess the usability of three critical gaming attributes: movement control in 3D virtual environments, instruction modality and feedback timing. Thirty acquired brain injury patients performed three tasks in which objective measures of usability were obtained. Mouse controlled movement was compared to keyboard controlled movement in a navigation task. Text-based instructions were compared to video-based instructions in a knowledge acquisition task. The effect of feedback timing on performance and motivation was examined in a navigation training game. Subjective usability ratings of all design options were assessed using questionnaires.

RESULTS showed that mouse controlled interaction in 3D environments is more effective than keyboard controlled interaction. Patients clearly preferred video-based instructions over text-based instructions, even though video-based instructions were not more effective in context of knowledge acquisition and comprehension. No effect of feedback timing was found on performance and motivation in games designed to train navigation abilities. Overall appreciation of the serious game was positive. The results provide valuable insights in the design choices that facilitate the transfer of skills from serious games to real-life situations.

Language: en

Keywords

acquired brain injury; cognitive training; rehabilitation; serious game; spatial navigation; usability