Serious Games for Cognitive Assessment with Older Adults: A Preliminary Study

One of the strategies proposed by the World Health Organization to promote a healthy aging, also known as “Active Aging”, where the maintenance of health and Independence in old age is identified as a good quality of physical, mental and social life, are the relevant factors concerning the preservation of the potential of achievement and development in this stage of life. Due to the common occurrence of mental disorders in older people, which are caused by many factors, the neuropsychological assessments form a part of the psychological clinical studies, where new approaches and techniques are resulting in tests that have been significantly progressing, although the principles in which these tests are based remain unchanged. In order to make those tests less tiring, and more relaxing and engaging, the Serious Games appeared, aiming to adapt the current neuropsychological tests to the context of videogaming and Digital Games, in order to achieve a better performance of the participants during the assessment and to enable a better data collection to the medical evaluation Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate whether a serious game can be a useful instrument to be used in cognitive assessment and stimulation, and which gameplay indicators could be potential proxies of cognitive measurement.