The narrative impact of active video games on physical activity

描述（由申请人提供）：项目概述体育活动（PA）是预防儿童肥胖和降低个人患某些癌症风险的关键。传统的PA干预（如锻炼、健身俱乐部）面临着持续动机和坚持健身或训练计划的问题，而积极的视频游戏（avg）由于其有希望的动机特性，为PA推广提供了一种创新的选择。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种创新的激励因素：叙述。叙述或故事情节有效地利用了人类对叙述结尾的需求（即找出故事将如何结束的需求）。一个构造良好的故事对认知、情感和健康行为有重大影响。然而，叙事元素很少被整合到avg中。一个有故事情节的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。因此，具有引人入胜的故事的avg应该能够提高玩家的活动能量消耗（AEE）、PA水平和心率。此外，带有叙事的avg可能更具互动性、沉浸感和吸引力，从而引发认知、情感和行为体验，这些体验在数量和质量上都与非叙事avg所引发的体验不同。本研究探讨了avg中新颖的引人入胜的叙述及其对PA的心理和行为影响。它建议在现有的AVG中创建相应的叙事和非叙事过场动画，且持续时间相当；40名8至11岁的儿童将通过观看相应的过场动画（即视频游戏中播放的简短动画片段）和玩游戏来玩游戏的叙事或非叙事版本。他们的认知和情感评价、玩游戏的动机、游戏持续时间、活动能量消耗（AEE）、PA水平和心率将被测量为叙述和非叙述版本的AVG。本研究是一系列严格系统调查的第一步，旨在通过AVG对抗儿童肥胖的叙述行为潜力。探索AVG中叙述的激励能力将激发新的AVG设计，并通过沉浸式和参与式游戏在儿童中引入PA促进的新维度，然后可能转化为基于学校或家庭的健康媒体干预。这种调查将有助于创造创新和有效的媒体产品，用于各种保健干预措施。

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.