EXPANSE: A novel narrative serious game for the behavioral assessment of cognitive abilities

Abstract

EFs are a set of processes that supports many cognitive domains as goal setting, monitoring, planning, and cognitive-behavioural flexible control. Currently, many standardized paper-and-pencil tests or scales are used to assess EFs. These tests are easy to administer, score, and interpret but present some limitations in terms of generalizability of behaviours in real life. More recently, Information and Communication Technology has provided a higher ecological validity in the EFs assessment. In order to increase the ecological validity, we have developed a serious game (SG), named EXPANSE, which aim was to compare the participants’ game performance (latency times, and correct answers) with the results obtained in the traditional tasks and scales. 354 healthy subjects participated to the study and the findings showed significant correlations among standard tasks and the serious game. The exploratory nature of the present study, on one hand, highlighted that SG could be an additional behavioral tool to assess EFs and, on the other, we need further investigations, including clinical populations, for better defining the game sensitivity toward EF components. Finally, the results show that serious games are a promising technology for the evaluation of real cognitive behavior along with traditional evaluation.