Abstract
Childhood obesity has become a global public health issue. Today, there are opportunities to promote health through technological devices such as serious games. Despite the major advancement of this field of research, the use of serious games as a validated intervention in clinical practice requires further clarifications on some methodological aspects. In this perspective article, we report the pros and cons of existing serious games. Besides, we attempt to propose a new methodology of design of a serious game that could help to cope with childhood obesity. The proposed idea consists of a serious game in virtual reality based on enjoyment, movement, education, and executive functioning (EF) training. Longitudinal studies and solid research protocol would certainly ensure consistency and aid interpretation.
Highlights
The prevalence of obesity among children is freighting, and is constantly raising in both developed and developing countries
Advances in neuroscience and neuropsychology showed that neurocognitive factors may play a causal-role in obesity (Deary et al, 2002; Gottfredson and Deary, 2004), especially executive functioning (EF; Hall et al, 2008)
We reported the pros and cons of serious games dedicated to treating childhood obesity
Summary
Reviewed by: Jon Arambarri, Universidad Europea del Atlántico, Spain Vitalie Faoro, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Bruno Bonnechère, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Childhood obesity has become a global public health issue. Despite the major advancement of this field of research, the use of serious games as a validated intervention in clinical practice requires further clarifications on some methodological aspects. In this perspective article, we report the pros and cons of existing serious games. We attempt to propose a new methodology of design of a serious game that could help to cope with childhood obesity. The proposed idea consists of a serious game in virtual reality based on enjoyment, movement, education, and executive functioning (EF) training. Longitudinal studies and solid research protocol would certainly ensure consistency and aid interpretation
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