Designing Serious Games for Cognitive Assessment of the Elderly

The under-diagnosis of cognitive impairments can lead to increased economic burden, hospitalization, and even death (Inouye, Bogardus, Baker, Leo-Summers, & Cooney, 2000). Many of the current cognitive tests have been developed to diagnose specific conditions. However, there is a lack of cognitive tools to assess transitory conditions that occur between normal cognition and cognitive failure such as delirium. In this paper, we discuss the development of a serious game for cognitive assessment of the elderly that can address this gap. We introduce the whack-a-mole game that we have developed and present initial findings concerning its usability and validity in university and elderly populations. We conclude by discussing the role of human factors engineering, and associated design methodologies, in developing serious games of this type.

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