ARCoD: A Serious Gaming Approach to Measure Cognitive Distortions

Abstract

Cognitive Distortion, defined as erroneous and in-accurate thoughts [4] can cause fatal mental impairment. Identifying the presence of cognitive distortions is the fundamental initiative to treat mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. As a consequence of COVID-19 and the other changes in social aspects, there is an escalation in the number of patients with mental illness. Although there are abundant effective psychotherapy strategies available, a substantial number of people avoid them due to misconceptions and stigma. Serious games can be a feasible solution to purvey mental healthcare to a significant percentage of people. The availability of smartphones unveils the opportunity to provide therapeutic facilities via digital gaming. Technology like Augmented Reality with its interactive features, has unlocked numerous opportunities in the mental health domain. In this paper, we have remodeled our previously proposed game, ARCoD, accessible on smartphones to measure Cognitive Distortions. We hypothesized that, through this game, it is possible to assess the level of 5 different Cognitive Distortions (Arbitrary Inference, Catastrophizing, Black and White Thinking, Emotional Reasoning, and Labeling) in an individual playing the game. The experimental outcome demonstrates that the level of Cognitive Distortions assessed from the game is exceedingly similar to the measurement accumulated from an established scale-Cognitive Distortion Scale (CDS).