Abstract
Augmented Reality (AR) technologies have recently been explored for application in dementia care, including cognitive training and screening, navigational assistance to find their way around, assistance to identify friends and family members, and assistance with activities of daily living. The presented work proposes the use of mobile and playful assessment of executive functions in the home environment by AR technology. We implemented a gamified version of the neuropsychological test ‘Tower of London’ (Shallice, 1982 [1]). It is played with poles of various size and colored balls, starting each exercise with a certain start and desired goal configuration of balls on poles. The novel AR-based technology enables hand-based interaction with artificial objects in the field of view and monitoring of the user’s gaze behavior via eye tracking towards the artificial objects of interest. A pilot study was performed with 12 healthy people that played the game with various degrees of difficulty concerning its planning depth. The results of the study demonstrate statistically significant correlation between the eye tracking features and the planning ability as well as cognitive flexibility measured by standardized psychological tests. This study provides first indication that executive functions can be estimated from playful AR-based interaction. Future work will focus on adjusting the game for persons with dementia, such as, by decreasing the difficulty level appropriately.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Shallice, T.: Specific impairments of planning. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B 298, 199–209 (1982)
Ngandu, T., Lehtisalo, J., Solomon, A., et al.: A 2 year multidomain intervention of diet, exercise, cognitive training, and vascular risk monitoring versus control to prevent cognitive decline in at-risk elderly people (FINGER): a randomised controlled trial. Lancet 385(9984), 2255–2263 (2015)
Diamond, A.: Executive functions. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 64, 135–168 (2013)
Boyle, P.A., Cahn-Weiner, D.: Assessment and prediction of functional impairment in vascular dementia. Expert Rev. Neurother. 4, 109–114 (2005)
McKhann, G.M., et al.: The diagnosis of dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease: recommendations from the National Institute on Aging-Alzheimer’s Association workgroups on diagnostic guidelines for Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimers Dementia 7, 263–269 (2011)
Zanwar, P., Heyn, P., McGrew, G., Raji, M.: Assistive technology megatrends to support persons with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias age in habitat: challenges for usability, engineering and public policy. In: H3 2018 (2018)
Bolestsis, C., McCallum, S.: Augmented reality cubes for cognitive gaming: preliminary usability and game experience testing. Int. J. Serious Games 3(1), 3–18 (2016)
Hayhurst, J.: How augmented reality and virtual reality is being used to support people living with dementia—design challenges and future directions. In: Jung, T., tom Dieck, M.C. (eds.) Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. PI, pp. 295–305. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64027-3_20
Rainville, C., Amieva, H., Lafont, S., Dartigues, J.-F., Orgogozo, J.-M., Fabrigoule, C.: Executive function deficits in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type a study with a Tower of London task. Arch. Clin. Neuropsychol. 17(2002), 513–530 (2002)
Oyama, A., et al.: Novel methods for rapid assessment of cognitive impairment using high-performance eye-tracking technology. Nat. Sci. Rep. 9, 12932 (2019)
Paletta, L., et al.: MIRA – a gaze-based serious game for continuous estimation of Alzheimer’s mental state. In: Proceedings of Eye Tracking Research & Applications. ACM Press (2020)
WHO Guidelines. Risk reduction of cognitive decline and dementia (2019)
Schaber, P., Lieberman, D.: Occupational Therapy Practice Guidelines for Adults with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders. AOTA Press, Bethesda (2010)
Guarino, A., et al.: Executive functions in alzheimer disease: a systematic review. Front. Aging Neurosci. 10, 437 (2019)
Tarnanas, I., et al.: Five-year biomarker progression variability for Alzheimer’s disease dementia prediction: can a complex instrumental activities of daily living marker fill in the gaps? Alzheimer’s Dement. Diagn. Assess. Dis. Monit. 1(4), 521–532 (2015)
Kennedy, R.S., Lane, N.E., Berbaum, K.S., Lilienthal, M.G.: Simulator sickness questionnaire: an enhanced method for quantifying simulator sickness. Int. J. Aviat. Psychol. 3(3), 203–220 (1993)
Betella, A., Verschure, P.F.: The affective slider: a digital self-assessment scale for the measurement of human emotions. PLoS ONE 11(2), e0148037 (2016)
Brooke, J.: SUS: a “quick and dirty” usability scale. In: Jordan, P.W., Thomas, B., Weerdmeester, B.A., McClelland, A.L. (Hrsg.) Usability Evaluation in Industry (1996)
Reitan, R.M.: The relation of the trail making test to organic brain damage. J. Consulting Psychol. (1955)
Kaller, C.P., et al.: Manual Tower of London – Freiburger Version, Mödling (2011)
Schüssler, S.: Care dependency and nursing care problems in nursing home residents with and without dementia. Medical University of Graz, Institute of Nursing Science, Austria (2015)
Acknowledgements
This work has been co-financed by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK) within projects AR-Demenz (no. 873757) and VR-Responder (no. 873522) organized by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). The contribution by AR-Demenz was 80% (game, eye tracking), by VR-Responder 20% (eye-tracking, wireless logging).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Pszeida, M. et al. (2021). Playful Screening of Executive Functions Using Augmented Reality and Gaze Based Assessment. In: Ayaz, H., Asgher, U., Paletta, L. (eds) Advances in Neuroergonomics and Cognitive Engineering. AHFE 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 259. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80285-1_49
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80285-1_49
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-80284-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-80285-1
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)