Using startle probe to compare affect and engagement between a serious game and an online intervention program

Abstract

The widespread popularity of computer games have led to their expanded use in more serious applications for training and education. In many cases serious games are being advanced as more compelling than traditional face-to-face or interactive online training. A typically reported motivation for developing serious games is to try and increase engagement of participants and thus ultimately the effectiveness of the training experience. In this paper we discuss the relation of affect to engagement. The training reported in this study relates to a psychological counseling program developed to assist patients with comorbidity in depression and alcohol use disorders. A pre-existing online intervention program, called "SHADE", had been found to provide effective treatment when participants completed the program. However, a significant number of participants failed to complete the program, with most exits occurring when Cognitive Based Training (CBT) was integrated into the online program. To try and increase the number of participants completing the program a serious game, called "Shadow" is being developed to cover similar material. This paper reports on a study that uses the startle reflex modulation measure to try and objectively quantify the affective engagement of players in the two treatment approaches, Shadow, the serious game, versus SHADE, the online intervention program. Also reported are the issues associated with using affective processing, as measured by the startle probe technique, as a means of evaluating engagement in serious games.

Serious Games

“…The third was a specially designed survey typically used to profile behaviour measuring different aspects of user engagement [12]. Results of the startle reflex and survey responses are discussed elsewhere [6,7].…”

Serious Games Supporting the Prevention and Treatment of Alcohol and Drug Consumption in Youth: Scoping Review

“…In terms of the substances addressed, of the 29 studies, 13 (45%) were focused on problems associated with the consumption or abuse of alcohol, 7 (24%) were focused on drugs (such as methamphetamine, inhalants, cannabis, ecstasy, opioids, lysergic acid diethylamide, cocaine, and heroin), and 7 (24%) addressed problems for both alcohol and drug use. It is important to note that 7% (2/29) of the studies considered comorbidity-of these 2 studies, 1 (50%) focused on alcohol use disorder and depression [26,27], and 1 (50%) focused on substance use and relationship violence [28].…”

“…Complementarily, the serious games focused on treatment (11/29, 38%) were designed to complement the therapeutic process for individuals with addiction problems or at risk and minimize relapse [39,40], reduce consumption [41][42][43][44], support recovery efforts [45], and promote a better adherence to the treatment [26,27]. Regarding the design of use, most of the serious games developed with prevention objectives (18/29, 62%) were stand-alone applications, and just a few (4/13, 31%) were designed as part of school-based prevention courses or curricula where teachers or social workers acted as facilitators [28,29,32,36,46].…”

Design of serious games based on cognitive bias modification and learned helplessness paradigms for treatment of depression.

“…Serious games have been developed for various aspects of depression. Bespoke serious games have been created for diagnosing depression (Maskeliūnas et al, 2017;Tsionas et al, 2020), treating depression (Fleming et al, 2012;Hookham et al, 2016;Knox et al, 2011;Merry et al, 2012;Oliveira et al, 2014;Pieters et al, 2017;Stasiak et al, 2014), and describing the experience of depression either metaphorically (Rusch, 2012) or literally (Quinn et al, 2014).…”