Nine Leading Research Teams Selected to Study How Digital Games Improve Players' Health

Nine Leading Research Teams Selected to Study How Digital Games Improve
Players' Health

Researchers seek to discover how interactive video games can be designed to
improve physical activity, prevention behaviors and self-management of chronic
conditions

PRINCETON, N.J., Nov. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation (RWJF) today announced more than $1.85 million in grants for
research that will offer unprecedented insight into how digital games can
improve players' health behaviors and outcomes. With funding from RWJF's
Health Games Research national program, nine research teams across the country
will conduct extensive studies to discover, for example, how the popular dance
pad video game Dance Dance Revolution might help Parkinson's patients reduce
the risk of falling, how Wii Active might be most effectively implemented in
high schools to help overweight students lose weight, how a mobile phone game
with a breath interface might help smokers quit or reduce their tobacco use,
or how facial recognition games might be designed to help people with autism
learn to identify others' emotions.

Health Games Research is supported by an $8.25 million grant from RWJF's
Pioneer Portfolio, which funds innovative projects that may lead to
breakthrough improvements in the future of health and health care. The
national program, which conducts, supports, and disseminates research to
improve the quality and impact of health games, is headquartered at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. It is directed by Debra Lieberman,
Ph.D., communication researcher in the university's Institute for Social,
Behavioral, and Economic Research and a leading expert in the research and
design of interactive media for learning and health behavior change. The
grants were awarded under the program's second funding round to strengthen the
evidence base in this emerging field.

"Digital games are interactive and experiential, and so they can engage people
in powerful ways to enhance learning and health behavior change, especially
when they are designed on the basis of well-researched strategies," said
Lieberman. "The studies funded by Health Games Research will provide
cutting-edge, evidence-based strategies that designers will be able to use in
the future to make their health games more effective."

The nine research teams, chosen from among 185 proposals, each have been
awarded between $100,000 and $300,000 to lead one- to two-year studies of
digital games that engage players in physical activity and/or motivate them to
improve how they take care of themselves through healthy changes in lifestyle;
prevention behaviors; cognitive, social or physical skills; chronic disease
self-management; and/or adherence to a medical treatment plan. Studies will
focus on diverse population groups that vary by race and ethnicity, health
status, income level, and game-play setting, with age groups ranging from
elementary school children to 80-year-olds. The research teams will study
participants' responses to health games played on a variety of platforms, such
as video game consoles, computers, mobile phones and robots.

"The pace of growth and innovation in digital games is incredible, and we see
tremendous potential to design them to help people stay healthy or manage
chronic conditions like diabetes or Parkinson's disease. However, we need to
know more about what works and what does not -- and why," said Paul Tarini,
team director for RWJF's Pioneer Portfolio. "Health Games Research is a major
investment to build a research base for this dynamic young field. Further,
the insights and ideas that flow from this work will help us continue to
expand our imagination of what is possible in this arena."

The nine grant recipients are:

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) Reward Circuitry,
Autism and Games that Teach Social Perceptual Skills -- tests effects of
facial perception games on the brain activity and facial perception skills of
8- to 12-year-old children who have been diagnosed with an autism spectrum
disorder (ASD). Children with ASD tend to have difficulty perceiving and
interpreting facial expressions and recognizing a person's identity by
observing their face. The games used in the study challenge them to notice
subtle differences in faces and expressions and give them opportunities to
rehearse these skills and receive feedback on their performance. Behavioral
testing and use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) of players'
brains before and after playing the games for 50 hours over the course of
eight weeks will help the researchers determine how the games influence facial
perception skills and how the brain changes in response to these game
experiences.

George Washington University (Washington, DC) Active-Adventure: Investigating
a Novel Exergaming Genre in Inner City School Physical Education Programs --
compares physical, psychological and behavioral effects of three activities:
(1) playing Winds of Orbis, a video game that involves an upper and lower body
workout as the player moves in order to control a character's movements in the
game; (2) playing Dance Dance Revolution, a popular video game that provides a
lower body workout as players dance on a pad that detects their dance steps;
and (3) engaging in traditional physical education activities at school. Study
participants are inner-city African-American and Hispanic students from grades
1-8 who are randomly assigned to the three groups. The study examines various
outcomes such as their enjoyment of the activities, attitudes toward physical
activity, amount of exercise and number of calories burned.

Georgetown University (Washington, DC) Wii Active Exergame Intervention for
Low-Income African-American Obese and Overweight Adolescents -- assigns obese
and overweight urban high school students to (1) play the Wii Active
competitively after school with the goal of lowering their body mass index
(BMI), (2) play the Wii Active cooperatively in a team after school with the
goal of helping each other reduce their BMI, or (3) play with no access to Wii
Active after school (control condition). The seven-month field experiment
examines physiological, social and cognitive outcomes of participants in all
three groups to determine whether those who play Wii Active are more
physically active; lose more weight; develop greater self-esteem; have more
friends; and have better memory, attention and other cognitive skills than
those assigned to the control group. The study also examines whether
competitive or cooperative game play influences these outcomes the most.

Long Island University (Brooklyn, NY) Dance Video Game Training and Falling
in Parkinson's Disease -- compares the use of a commercially available dance
pad video game, Dance Dance Revolution, to two traditional treatment options
that help people with Parkinson's Disease reduce their risk of falling by
increasing their balance, strength, endurance, motor coordination and
visual-motor integration. The two traditional treatments are rhythmic
stepping and treadmill training with music. The researchers assess balance,
motor function, reaction time and self-confidence to evaluate the game in
comparison to the two traditional treatments. They also use functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to observe participants' brain activity.

Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI) Buddy Up! Harnessing Group
Dynamics to Boost Motivation to Exercise. Research has found that people will
work harder with a partner in a strenuous physical task than when working
alone, especially if the partner is moderately better at the task. This study
provides a virtual partner that engages in exercises with participants on the
Eye Toy: Kinetic camera-based video game. College-age study participants are
randomly assigned to engage in Eyetoy: Kinetic exercises either with a virtual
partner or alone. Characteristics of the partner are varied to see which are
most effective at improving endurance and exercise time.

Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI) Short-Term and Long-Term
Effectiveness of Exergames for Young Adults -- investigates effects of the
Mount Olympus game, a 3D fantasy role-playing game that requires players to
move their upper and lower body in order to control their character's
movements throughout the world of the game. Overweight and inactive college
students participate in the study, which randomly assigns them either to play
Mount Olympus or to use a motivational Web site designed to promote and
support physical activity. The study examines the extent to which each media
activity meets individuals' needs for competence, autonomy and social
relatedness, and how meeting these needs may motivate engagement in the
activity. More engagement is expected to lead to more physical activity in
daily life and therefore to more weight loss and better health outcomes.

Teachers College, Columbia University (New York, NY) Lit: A Game Intervention
for Nicotine Smokers -- develops and evaluates a smoking reduction game
delivered on a mobile phone. The game is intended to be an alternative to
smoking with the goal of reducing or eliminating tobacco use in players'
lives. The game involves breathing into a microphone to control gameplay and
is coupled with sound, color, images, challenges and feedback to mimic the
stimulant and relaxant effects of smoking. Effects will be evaluated through
emotional response and physiological measures (electroencephalogram (EEG),
heart rate, galvanic skin response) and compared to subjects after smoking or
after playing the game in lieu of smoking. If successful, the game will
emulate the effects of smoking as a replacement therapy for smokers who want
to quit.

University of California, San Francisco (San Francisco, CA) A Video Game to
Enhance Cognitive Health in Older Adults. As people age, they lose some of
their ability to sustain their attention and to focus their attention on their
main task while ignoring distractions. This study aims to improve these and
other related cognitive skills by using a driving game in which players
practice paying attention to relevant information, such as traffic signs, and
ignoring irrelevant information, such as billboards. The study monitors brain
activity with electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings and observes eye position
and game performance in younger adults (ages 18 to 30) and older adults (ages
60 to 80) before and after six weeks of game play. The study assesses changes
in cognitive ability, brain activity and transfer of game-related skills to
similar cognitive operations and activities that take place in daily life.

University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA) Robot Motivator: Towards
Adaptive Health Games for Productive Long-Term Interaction -- examines the
influence of virtual social characters on people's motivation to exercise.
Study participants ages 60 and older are randomly assigned to exercise by
following the lead of either (1) an embodied character, which is a
human-looking robot that demonstrates exercises right there in the room with
them or (2) an animated presentation of the same robot on a television screen.
The study investigates the role of physical embodiment and social presence on
participants' motivation to engage and persist in exercise and physical
activity.

About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Pioneer Portfolio
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health
care issues facing our country. As the nation's largest philanthropy devoted
exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, the
Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to
identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful and timely change.
The Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio supports innovative ideas and projects that
may lead to important breakthroughs in health and health care. Projects in the
Pioneer Portfolio are future-oriented and look beyond conventional thinking to
explore solutions at the cutting edge of health and health care. When it comes
to helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need, the
Foundation expects to make a difference in your lifetime. For more
information, visit www.rwjf.org/pioneer.

About the University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is one of 10 universities
in the University of California system, and is one of only 62
research-intensive institutions elected to membership in the prestigious
Association of American Universities. The distinguished 1,128-member faculty
includes five Nobel Prize winners and scores of elected members or fellows of
elite national academies and associations. The campus is also home to 11
national centers and institutes, eight of them sponsored by the National
Science Foundation. U.S. News and World Report's guide, "America's Best
Colleges," ranks UCSB number 11 among all public universities in the nation.
For more information, visit www.ucsb.edu.

UCSB's Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research (ISBER) brings
together researchers from many academic disciplines in order to foster
collaboration and span the boundaries between the social and behavioral
sciences, the humanities, and the physical and biological sciences. For more
information, visit www.isber.ucsb.edu.

The Health Games Research national program at UCSB conducts, supports, and
disseminates research to enhance the quality and impact of interactive games
used to improve health. For more information, visit
www.healthgamesresearch.org or contact the program at
healthgamesresearch@isber.ucsb.edu.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A streaming audio replay of the Health Games Research telenews
event held today will be available on the Web at
http://www.healthgamesresearch.org as of 7 p.m. EDT.

SOURCE Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Games Research

Shannon Varroney, +1-703-741-7057, svarroney@golinharris.com, for Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation's Health Games Research