ArticleJMIR serious games2018
A Mobile App Delivering a Gamified Battery of Cognitive Tests Designed for Repeated Play (OU Brainwave): App Design and Cohort Study.
Article in JMIR serious games, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Conceptual Ambiguity Surrounding Gamification and Serious Games in Health Care: Literature Review and Development of Game-Based Intervention Reporting Guidelines (GAMING).Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Pooled it
- Leveraging Swipe Gesture Interactions From Mobile Games as Indicators of Anxiety and Depression: Exploratory Study.JMIR mental health · 2025Article
- Digital Ergonomics of NavegApp, a Novel Serious Game for Spatial Cognition Assessment: Content Validity and Usability Study.JMIR serious games · 2025Article
- Measuring the Reliability of a Gamified Stroop Task: Quantitative Experiment.JMIR serious games · 2024Article
- The Making and Evaluation of Digital Games Used for the Assessment of Attention: Systematic Review.JMIR serious games · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMobile phone and tablet apps are an increasingly common platform for collecting data. A key challenge for researchers has been participant "buy-in" and attrition for designs requiring repeated testing.
objectiveThe objective of this study was to develop and assess the utility of 1-2 minute versions of both classic and novel cognitive tasks using a user-focused and user-driven mobile phone and tablet app designed to encourage repeated play.
methodsA large sample of app users (N=13,979 at first data collection) participated in multiple, self-paced sessions of classic working memory (N-back), spatial cognition (mental rotation), sustained attentional focus (persistent vigilance task), and split attention (multiple object tracking) tasks, along with the implementation of a comparatively novel action-learning task. The "OU Brainwave" app was designed to measure time-of-day variation in cognitive performance and did not offer any training program or promise any cognitive enhancement. To record participants' chronotype, a full Morningness-Eveningness questionnaire was also included, which measures whether a person's circadian rhythm produces peak alertness in the morning, in the evening, or in between. Data were collected during an 18-month period. While the app prompted re-engagement at set intervals, participants were free to complete each task as many times as they wished.
resultsWe found a significant relationship between morningness and age (r=.298, n=12,755, P<.001), with no effect of gender (t
conclusionsUsing extremely short testing periods and permitting participants to decide their level of engagement-both in terms of which gamified task they played and how many sessions they completed-we were able to collect a substantial and valid dataset. We suggest that the success of OU Brainwave should inform future research oriented apps-particularly in issues of balancing participant engagement with data fidelity.
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