The narrative impact of active video games on physical activity

描述(由申请人提供)：项目摘要体力活动(PA)是预防儿童肥胖和降低个人患某些类型癌症风险的关键。虽然传统的PA干预措施(如锻炼、健身俱乐部)面临持续动机和坚持健身或训练计划的问题，但主动视频游戏(AVGs)因其前景光明的激励特性而为PA推广提供了一种创新的替代方案。尽管研究表明，AVG可以让玩家达到推荐的PA水平，但儿童玩AVG的动机往往会迅速下降。为了减少这种下降，我们的研究引入了一个创新的激励因素：叙事。叙事或故事情节有效地利用了人类对叙事结束的需要(即，需要弄清楚故事将如何结束)。一个结构良好的叙事对认知、情感和健康行为有重要影响。然而，叙事元素很少被纳入AVG中。有故事情节的AVG应该通过增加动机和延长游戏时间来鼓励孩子参与更多的PA活动。因此，具有令人信服的叙事的AVG应该增加玩家的活动能量消耗(AEE)、PA水平和心率。此外，具有叙事性的AVG可能更具互动性、身临其境和引人入胜，从而引发与非叙事性AVG在数量和质量上都不同的认知、情感和行为体验。这项拟议的研究既探索了AVGs中引人入胜的叙事的新颖添加，也探讨了它对PA的心理和行为后果。它建议在现有的AVG中穿插创建相应的叙事和非叙事动画场景；40名8至11岁的儿童将通过观看相应的动画场景(即视频游戏中播放的简短动画剪辑)和玩游戏来玩叙事或非叙事版本的游戏。他们的认知和情感评估，玩游戏的动机，玩游戏的持续时间，活动能量消耗(AEE)，PA水平，以及心率将被测量为叙事和非叙事版本的AVG。这项研究是一系列严谨的系统调查的第一步，目的是通过AVG来对抗儿童肥胖的叙事的行为潜力。在AVG中探索叙事的动机能力将启发AVG的新颖设计，并在具有沉浸式和参与性游戏的儿童中引入PA促进的新维度，然后可能被转化为基于学校或家庭的健康媒体干预。这样的调查将有助于创造创新和有效的媒体产品，应用于各种健康干预措施。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Project Summary Physical activity (PA) is key to both preventing childhood obesity and reducing an individual's risk for certain types of cancer. While conventional PA interventions (e.g., exercise, health clubs) face problems of sustained motivation and adherence to fitness or training programs, active video games (AVGs) offer an innovative alternative for PA promotion due to their promising motivational properties. Although studies suggest that AVGs allow players to achieve the recommended levels of PA, children's motivation to play AVGs often decreases quickly. To reduce this decline, our study introduces an innovative motivating factor: a narrative. A narrative or storyline effectively draws on the human need for narrative closure (i.e., the need to find out how the story will end). A well-constructed narrative has a significant impact on cognition, affect, and health behavior. However, narrative elements are seldom incorporated into AVGs. An AVG with a storyline should encourage children to engage in more PA through increased motivation and extended play. Consequently, AVGs with compelling narratives should increase players' activity energy expenditure (AEE), PA level, and heart rate. Moreover, AVGs with narratives are likely to be more interactive, immersive, and engaging, and thereby elicit cognitive, affective, and behavioral experiences that differ both quantitatively and qualitatively from those elicited by nonnarrative AVGs. The proposed study explores both the novel addition of a compelling narrative to AVGs and its psychological and behavioral consequences on PA. It proposes to create corresponding narrative and nonnarrative cutscenes of comparable duration interspersed in an existing AVG; 40 children aged 8 to 11 will play narrative or nonnarrative versions of the games by watching corresponding cutscenes (i.e., brief, animated clips played in video games) and playing the game. Their cognitive and affective evaluation, motivation to play the games, duration of play, activity energy expenditure (AEE), PA level, and heart rate will be measured for the narrative and nonnarrative versions of the AVG. This study is a first step in a series of rigorous systematic inquiries into the behavioral potentials of narratives via AVGs for combating childhood obesity. The exploration of a narrative's motivating capacity in AVGs will inspire novel AVG designs and introduce a new dimension of PA facilitation among children with immersive and involving games, which may then be translated into school- or family-based health media interventions. Such inquiries would help to create innovative and effective media products to be applied to various health interventions.