Just given birth to a journal paper publication about silver gamers. For all my press friends out there, the (immediate) release goes like this:
Solving arithmetic challenges is more efficient and effective with pen and paper, but brain training with video games is more exciting and may be connected to positive feelings for elderly gamers, according to a study to be published in the forthcoming issue of the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior.
A research team from the Blekinge Institute of Technology surveyed people aged above 65 years, when playing an arithmetic brain training game on paper and on a Nintendo DS portable gaming console and recorded the time it took them to complete the game and the errors they produced. They uncovered a positive relation between playing with the portable console and the fun this age group reported. To ensure that these effects were genuine to older gamers, they gathered and compared results from a control group of adolescents.
“It was quite surprising that we found an association of the game condition with positive feelings for the elderly but arbitrarily with negative feelings for the young,” says main investigator Lennart Nacke, who is currently completing his doctoral degree at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden. The research implies that elderly might indeed appreciate the logic-training puzzles of brain training games for their mental benefit than younger gamers.
Journal reference
Lennart E. Nacke, Anne Nacke, Craig A. Lindley. Brain Training for Silver Gamers: Effects of Age and Game Form on Effectiveness, Efficiency, Self-Assessment, and Gameplay Experience. CyberPsychology & Behavior. -Not available-, ahead of print. doi:10.1089/cpb.2009.0013.
Related Links
- Dr. Shock wrote a nice treatment on the brain-training study. Thank you.
- Does the Brain Like E-Books? – Discussion on the impact of paper vs. digital
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3 Responses to “Silver Gamers Enjoy Playing Brain-Training Games More Than Adolescents”
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September 23rd, 2009 at 10:06
@AgingGamer @PressAbout @pomeranian99 @textaufgabe Brain Training for Silver Gamers http://bit.ly/1vcu88, http://bit.ly/1ySZZS #pressrelease
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September 23rd, 2009 at 18:51
Silver Gamers Enjoy Playing Brain Training Games More Than …: Solving arithmetic challenges is more efficient .. http://bit.ly/7lcNm
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December 20th, 2009 at 18:48
[...] As gamers grow older the problem of interacting with games may grow (and they might become part of the accessible problem statistics), but a large number of disabled people are currently excluded from playing games. This should not be a problem as games in general are about researching alternative forms of interaction and thus different interaction forms should be available in games, some of them may even be included as gameplay modes (adding bonus value to the product). Before we talk about this some more, first have a look at this presentation. [...]