Researchers studying game benefits for senior set
Video game developers may have 15-year-old boys in mind, but game researchers at Georgia Tech are putting controllers in the hands of 85-year-olds in hopes of developing cognitive interventions for the elderly.
“Conventional wisdom in our society [says], ‘If I do a crossword, it will keep my mind sharp,’ but research shows it doesn’t have a real general effect on your cognitive ability in terms of working memory, spatial reasoning and all these other measures. … This idea that I sit down with a brain game and I do simple arithmetic and that’s going to stave off cognitive decline is unfortunately not true,” said Georgia Tech research scientist Maribeth Gandy, CmpE 98, MS CS 99.
Gandy is part of a four-year, $1.25 million, National Science Foundation-funded project between Georgia Tech and North Carolina State University that began with the selection of a game to introduce to study participants, more than 100 assisted living facility residents with an average age of 88.
“We did a pilot study to see what kinds of games older people liked. It was kind of surprising. The game Spore, they hated it. One of the quotes was: ‘I don’t have much time left on this Earth, and I don’t want to spend it playing Spore,’” Gandy said.
Researchers instead are using the Wii game Boom Blox, which involves knocking things down but also has a puzzle component, Gandy said, “kind of like reverse Jenga.”
“It requires them to think in three dimensions. They have to move this virtual camera around, look at the scene. They have to strategize about what they’re going to do,” she said.
Once the game was selected, the Georgia Tech team built a test kit contained in a rolling cart, Gandy said. “There is a little sensor pack that’s in the Wiimote that captures data like their galvanic skin response and their pulse ox. This mobile station lets us gather quantitative and qualitative data about people playing games. We’ve got cameras and microphones. We’re trying to get as much data as we can while these people are playing Boom Blox.”
Gandy said the N.C. State team will determine the components of a successful brain game. “Then here at Georgia Tech we’re going to create an example of one of these games that not only has cognitive benefits but is actually accessible and compelling for older people.
“This is a huge games study of older people to find out not only what helps them cognitively but what they like in a game, what they don’t like, what kinds of interfaces they like and don’t like, what kinds of interfaces are accessible to them physically.”
Gandy said if the researchers determine that playing games such as Boom Blox even slows mental deterioration in older people, “that’s a great finding.”
She acknowledged that play studies aren’t always taken seriously.
“But we’re taking tasks that would be very beneficial to people but putting them in a context that keeps them motivated, makes them excited to do the activity. They’re doing serious things, they’re just inside this game context.”
She pointed to another of her projects, this one funded by the Health Systems Institute and involving the Georgia Tech Research Institute, focusing on stroke rehabilitation.
The GTRI team is tracking movements, while Gandy and others at the Interactive Media Technology Center are building a game that will require those movements necessary in rehabilitation.
“If you tell someone, ‘Well, you’ve had a stroke, now we want you to go home and every day spend an hour where you [move] your arm,’ no one is going to do that. But if you tell them, ‘We’re going to give you this cheap system you can take home, and it’s going to be kind of a fun thing and track your progress and when your grandson comes over he can play with you,’” the outcome may be different, she said.
Gandy herself is a longtime player of video games.
“My favorite game of all time is probably Super Mario Kart for Nintendo. That came out right about when I started college. I was very good at that,” she said. “Now I play Nintendo DS games because I can play on an airplane or I’ll play that while my husband plays Xbox. I tend to like puzzle games and things like that, although the game I spend the most time on right now is Rock Band 2. I like to play the drums.
“A game is any sort of activity that has a goal to it. The activity itself can be very beneficial. Playing games is not always a waste of time. We’re looking at how to make game playing very productive.”
Twitter