Development and integration of serious games with focus in the training of different cognitive abilities in elderly people to improve their quality of life

Abstract

It is well known that each year the amount of elderly people is increasing and the life expectancy is longer in EU countries. So, obviously, it is important to include new tools in the socio-sanitary system to maintain and improve the quality of life of the target group. The objective of the proposal described in this paper is to train cognitive abilities (memory, attention, spacial processing…) to promote independent living though a set of serious games (4). These video games serve as a tool to measure partially the cognitive skills of the users and helps to train and improve them. The tests were carried out with 100 people from 3 countries in different socio-cultural contexts. The first levels of each game are played by users several times with good scores, a fact that does not occur in the higher levels that are usually abandoned. However, the subjective feedback received is very promising as they feel they are having fun.