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theses

Cognitive Engagement is defined as "The act of beginning and carrying on of activity with a sense of emotional involvement or commitment and the deliberate application of effort. Therefore, the concept of 'cognitive engagement in rehabilitation' is operationally defined here as a deliberate effort and commitment to working toward the goals of rehabilitation interventions, typically demonstrated through active, effort-full participation in therapy and cooperation with treatment providers" [1]. Neurorehabilitation robots have been used with tremendous success to restore and improve motor recovery. However, cognitive engagement, which is an important aspect of the therapy has been partially incorporated into the current therapeutic strategies.
The most common methods of assessing cognitive engagement such as self-reports or physiological signals are either subjective or compromised by the disease itself. Hence, these measurements have limited usability in the therapy. There is thus an unmet need to objectively quantify cognitive engagement and integrate it into adaptive rehabilitation strategies.
In this work, we developed a serious game based on Go No-Go paradigm with built-in adaptability. The serious game is designed on the concept of Multiple Object Tracking (MOT), where the participant has to focus on multiple dots on the screen and distinguish between tracking and distractor dots by a Go or No-Go stimulus. The game is adaptive, and adapts the game's speed and the number of dots, by accuracy and reaction time respectively. We aim to test robust adaptive strategies and test their outcome on therapy sessions. We observe parameters such as speed, accuracy, reaction time, count and distance moved to try and gauge how adaptability affects the game.
We aim to draw reliable inferences and better understand the factors that affect adaptability. We know that serious games play a vital role in rehabilitation, as they help add liveliness and entertainment in repetitive exercises in therapy sessions and help the patient achieve their goals. Cognitive Engagement plays a crucial role in serious games, as they are the factor that helps keep patients engrossed in the game and adaptation allows us to make sure that the levels of Cognitive Engagement stay up.

ETD_9654

M.S.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-pf3m-8m31

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.