Effects of physical activity based HCI games on the attention, emotion and sensory-motor coordination

In this paper, several kinect-based games which are developed and implemented for the improvement of attention and sensory-motor coordination will be presented. The interface, and difficulty levels of these games are specially designed for the ease of different age groups. The games involve physical activities for the fulfillment of some basic tasks within the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) game, such as fruit picking and air hockey, with different difficulty levels based on varying parameters of the games. The human action is observed and recognized via Kinect RGB-D sensors. The games are tested with a group of deaf children (3.5–5 years) as a part of the experiments of an ongoing project, to decrease the stress of the children, and increase their enjoyment, attention and sensory-motor coordination before the main tests. Both the game results and the evaluation of the therapists and the pedagogues show that the games have a positive impact on the children. The games are also tested with a group of adults as a control group and the attention levels of the adults were also observed via mobile EEG device. The children were supposed to use the EEG device in the main tests therefore the device was not integrated to their game sessions.