Towards Understanding the Effect of Serious Games on Attention, Adherence, and Behavior for Children with ADHD

Serious games are an effective means to help children with ADHD improve their attention and impulse control. As prior works primarily focused on clinical benefits, the relationship among serious games, children, and their caregivers remains underexplored. To bridge this knowledge gap, we conducted a two-stage study: (1) with nine educators specialized in ADHD in clinical settings and (2) with seven dyads of children and their caregivers in home settings. To facilitate the study, we developed and deployed NeuroWorld DTx v1.0 , a suite of five games that train children to improve their attention capacity. Our analysis found that children demonstrated self-efficacy, engagement, and adherence despite NeuroWorld being less fun than entertainment games. Additionally, most caregivers emphasized the importance of educational aspects over entertainment aspects. Collectively, our findings provide novel insights into how serious games could be developed and deployed for at-home use among children with ADHD.