JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Through several recent studies, tenacity, which involves solving problems with patience and enthusiasm for the goal, has emerged as an indicator of education effect, therapeutic effect, and well-being. However, relatively little research has assessed how to measure and evaluate tenacity.

Objective:

We aimed to analyze the usage pattern of the serious game to define tenacity and examine how it affects the effectiveness of cognitive development by measuring the difference between game-driven cognitive index based on detailed cognitive activities and game score.

Methods:

We used a serious game for 5419 children who responded to the survey from September 20, 2018, to July 14, 2020, divided into six groups according to their tenacity level and presence of developmental disabilities. We defined user tenacity through game usage patterns and analyzed how children play the serious game differently according to their characteristics.

Results:

We confirmed that tenacity affects the distribution of score changes from the primary episode to the 10th episode of serious games, showing statistical significance for some of the sub-categories in both the typical developments group and developmental disabilities group. Moreover, we found differences in difference estimation and found that tenacity affects the improvement of a serious game-driven cognitive index for Inference, Numerical and Organizing categories commonly seen in both typical developments group (p=<.000, p=0.001, p=.001), and developmental disabilities group (p=.0019, p=.022, p=.002).

Conclusions:

Based on these findings, we propose that cognitive improvement is derived from not only natural-wise content-driven effects but also user compliance effects depending on the non-cognitive factors, regardless of the presence of developmental disabilities.