Prevention in addiction: Using serious games to (re)train cognition in Dutch adolescents

Abstract

Excessive use of psychoactive substances during adolescence poses a serious health risk. It can lead to cognitive impairment, as well as addictive problems later in life. Dual process models of addiction suggest that to counter this development, the overdeveloped automatic reactions to drug-related cues should be tempered and cognitive control functions should be strengthened. Recently, several training paradigms have been developed to (re)train these processes. While effective in long time users, most adolescents lack a motivation to train. To motivate them we have developed several serious games that incorporate these evidence-based training paradigms. This paper will present some of them and describe how they work.