Principles underlying the design of a cognitive training game as a research framework

Action video games have great potential as cognitive training instruments for their data collection efficiency over standard testing, their natural motive power, and as they have demonstrated benefits for broad aspects of cognition. However, commercial video games do not allow researchers full control over games' unique features and parameters while presently available scientific games violate key criteria, generally lack appeal, and do not collect enough data for principled exploration of the game design space. To capitalize on the benefits of action video games and facilitate a systematic, scientific exploration of video games and cognition, we propose the Cognitive Training Game Framework (CTGF). The CTGF addresses criteria that we believe are important for gamifying an experimental environment, such as modularity, accessibility, adaptivity, and variety. By offering the potential to collect large data sets and to systematically explore scientific hypotheses in a controlled environment, the resulting framework will make significant contributions to cognitive training research.