Employing affection in elderly healthcare serious games interventions

Abstract

Serious games for elderly healthcare provide a promising and novel way to promote the well-being of senior citizens. The gaming environment, originally designed for a younger target population, benefits from the increasing power of personal computers, mobiles devices (phones, tablets) and SmartTVs, as well as the recent emergence of motion capture technology developed for videogame consoles via worn physical sensors and controller free sensors. Measuring self-efficacy by elderly individuals on such gaming environments has characterized them in terms of their effectiveness to motivate an audience reluctant to undertake more conventional forms of activities. However, the relationship between the features making the game challenging and the senior user's behaviour in becoming motivated so as to interact with the system independently and effectively is still elusive. For instance, failure in understanding the game's instructions or adapting to the speed and complexity may be thought of as barriers that affect the seniors' satisfactory interaction within the gaming environment. A step towards this direction would require using emotions in the midst of the gaming environment so as to allow for the embodiment of real-time mental (cognitive and emotional), and physical data. The main goal is to focus on assessing the features that encourage the elderly individuals to interact with the gaming environment on a daily basis. We propose to further enhance the gaming environment through the use of personal biosensors (i.e. wireless EEG) and cameras (i.e. fisheye camera) so as to collect the user's mental and physical changes over time and fuse them in a decision support system. This information will eventually provide feedback on the gaming experience so as to modify it according to the user's affective state.