Sense of Familiarity: Improving Older Adults' Adaptation to Exergames

Abstract

Exergames are proven to be effective in helping older adults improve their physical and mental capabilities. However, older adults' maladaptation to exergames may occur due to the complexity of game tasks and interfaces. In this work, we show that familiarity can improve older adults' adaptation to exergames. The results of our first study indicate that older adults with higher level of familiarity to exergames exhibit higher level of motivation and ability. To maximize the effectiveness of exergames, it is helpful to provide older adults exergames which they are more familiar with. To evaluate the familiarity level of exergames, we propose a novel familiarity model with five factors, namely prior experience, positive emotion, repeated time, level of processing, and retention rate. Results from our second study show that the identified five factors have significant positive correlations with familiarity and there is a high positive correlation between familiarity levels and participants' satisfaction to the exergames.