Modulation of Physiological Responses and Activity Levels during Exergame Experiences

Exergames are exercise-oriented games that offer opportunities to increase motivation for exercising and improving health benefits. However, Exergames need to be adaptive and provide accurate feedback for physiologically correct exercising, sustaining motivation and for better personalized experiences. To investigate the role of physiological computing in those aspects, we employed a repeated measures design exploring changes in physiological responses caused by the gaming and exercising components of an Exergame intervention. Seventeen older adults (64.5±6.4 years) interacted with a videogame in two modes (Control, Exergaming) in different difficulty levels. Electrocardiography, Electrodermal and Kinematic data were gathered synchronously with game data. Findings show that Exercise intensities and heart rate changes were largely modulated by game difficulty, and positive feedback was more likely to produce arousal responses during Exergaming than negative feedback. A heart rate- variability analysis revealed strong influences of the interaction mode showing that Exergaming has potential to enhance cardiac regulation. Our results bring new insights on the usefulness of psychophysiological methods to sustain exercising motivation and personalizing gameplay to the individual needs of users in Exergaming experiences.