Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
Play Exergames, Consume less energy
Energy intake and expenditure during sedentary screen time and motion-controlled video gaming
Television watching and playing of video games (VGs) are associated with higher energy intakes. Motion-controlled video games (MC) may be a healthier alternative to sedentary screen-based activities because of higher energy expenditures, but little is known about the effects of these games on energy intakes.
Energy intake, expenditure, and surplus (intake - expenditure) were compared during sedentary (television and VG) and active (MC) screen-time use.
Young adults (n = 120; 60 women) were randomly assigned to the following 3 groups: television watching, playing traditional VGs, or playing MCs for 1 h while snacks and beverages were provided. Energy intakes, energy expenditures, and appetites were measured.
Intakes across these 3 groups showed a trend toward a significant difference (P = 0.065). The energy expenditure (P < 0.001) was higher, and the energy surplus (P = 0.038) was lower, in MC than in television or VG groups. All conditions produced a mean (SD) energy surplus as follows: 638 408 kcal in television, 655 533 kcal in VG, and 376 487 kcal in MC groups. The OR for consuming ≥500 kcal in the television compared with the MC group was 3.2 (95% CI: 1.2, 8.4). Secondary analyses, in which the 2 sedentary conditions were collapsed, showed an intake that was 178 kcal (95% CI: 8, 349 kcal) lower in the MC condition than in the sedentary groups (television and VG).
MCs may be a healthier alternative to sedentary screen time because of a lower energy surplus, but the playing of these games still resulted in a positive energy balance.
Source: http://www.ajcn.org/content/96/2/234.short
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Overcoming the truth
Be hold, they can see if you lie with the way you move the sensor.
Duran, N. D., Dale, R., & McNamara, D. S. (2010). The action dynamics of overcoming the truth. Psychon Bull Rev, 17(4), 486-491.
A convincing deceiver must act in discordance with their knowledge of the truth. To do so requires the deceiver to resolve competition between what is known to be true and what is intended to be false. We investigated the temporal signature of this competition by examining the action dynamics of arm movement while participants responded falsely or truthfully to autobiographical information. The participants answered no or yes by navigating a Nintendo Wii Remote to no and yes regions on a large projector screen. Trajectory analyses of the fine-grained arm movements show increased complexity in false responding relative to truthful responding, with the greatest difference in false yes answers. The dynamic motor movements also reveal greater strength of competition during the act of false responding, thereby extending traditional response time measures that capture latent competition alone. These results suggest that deceptive processes may be detectable when action is allowed to covary with thought. Supplemental figures and a list of the sentence stimuli may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.
Source: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p340447766023087/
Duran, N. D., Dale, R., & McNamara, D. S. (2010). The action dynamics of overcoming the truth. Psychon Bull Rev, 17(4), 486-491.
A convincing deceiver must act in discordance with their knowledge of the truth. To do so requires the deceiver to resolve competition between what is known to be true and what is intended to be false. We investigated the temporal signature of this competition by examining the action dynamics of arm movement while participants responded falsely or truthfully to autobiographical information. The participants answered no or yes by navigating a Nintendo Wii Remote to no and yes regions on a large projector screen. Trajectory analyses of the fine-grained arm movements show increased complexity in false responding relative to truthful responding, with the greatest difference in false yes answers. The dynamic motor movements also reveal greater strength of competition during the act of false responding, thereby extending traditional response time measures that capture latent competition alone. These results suggest that deceptive processes may be detectable when action is allowed to covary with thought. Supplemental figures and a list of the sentence stimuli may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.
Source: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p340447766023087/
Casual Exergames
Just got acquainted with the new term "Casual Exergame" which is a branch of Exergames following these rules:
Easy to learn. Casual games should have limited instructions, provide rules that are easy to learn, and guide players with a clear and consistent user interface.
Simple controls. Casual games should take advantage of assumed knowledge, such as drag, drop and click.
Play in a relatively short play period. Casual games should be able to be enjoyed in a series of short time increments, though sometimes people play one level after another for many hours. Most casual games’ play intervals are between 5 and 15 minutes to complete a level.
Reduced complexity and non-punishing game play. Casual games allow depth and complexity to emerge from the player’s basic actions instead of making the player master a large and complex set of actions.
Family friendly. The IGDA Casual Games SIG deems that casual games should not contain objectionable content, such as overt violence, or sexuality. The CGA agrees that casual games should appeal to people of all ages, genders and nationalities. In recent years, casual games have been developed (e.g., games rated 17+ for Apple’s iPad) that do not adhere to this criterion.
Source: http://hci.usask.ca/uploads/233-ICEC_GrabApple_cameraReady.pdf
