Rapid Deployment and Evaluation of Mobile Serious Games: A Cognitive Assessment Case Study

Serious games are proposed as a more efficient and enjoyable way to carry out cognitive assessment. We compare prediction of cognitive ability with a purpose-built serious game and with a similar game built using a game engine. In an experiment conducted with 28 participants, performance on the two games is assessed relative to three cognitive abilities, using two different tablet sizes and two different input methods. The results for the game-engine variant were similar to the purpose-built game, where both games significantly predicted performance on the three cognitive abilities, and were sensitive to the effects of age. Performance on both games was not significantly affected by tablet size or input method. These results support earlier findings that serious games can provide valid cognitive assessment, and they show that game engines can be used to develop serious games for cognitive assessment, cost effectively and without loss of predictive validity.