Cognitive Memory Games

I am participating in a study at Davidson College on the effects of video game training on the cognitive performance of older adults.   That's a mouthful but what it entails is me doing a series of games each day which lasts about an hour.  I have to do a series of 40 sessions and should finish up in early September.  Before I started, I went through some cognitive testing at Davidson and will do additional testing at the end of my game playing.  The games are not a whole lot of fun and sometimes give me a headache!  One of them involves Visual Sweeps.  You are shown a pattern in a square that moves in and out and you have to pay attention and determine which way the pattern is going (in and out, 2 outs, 2 ins, etc.)  It starts out slow but by the end (about 70 times), it is going so fast you have to really be sharp to determine the pattern.  If you blink, you miss it.  Another one of the games is a Peripheral Challenge where you see a group of birds flash on the screen in a circle and one is different than the other.  Once the birds go away, you have to click on the area where you saw the unique bird.  You do not have time to look at each bird separately - you have to sweep the screen using your peripheral vision.  And believe me, there is not that much difference in the birds!  Another - and the hardest for me - is Target Tracker.  Two or more (I have gotten up to 5) objects will appear on the screen - usually small bubbles or little jellyfish.  At first they are alone; then more identical objects appear with them and they are all moving around.  You have to pay attention to the original targets tracking their movement.  Once they stop moving, you click on the original targets.  Not too bad if it's just 2 or 3 bubbles, but when 4 or 5 are on there and all going in a different direction, I have a hard time tracking all of them!!  Another one of the games is Eye for Detail.  A total of 3-5 objects (like different flowers) appear one at a time on the screen (sometimes really quick).  Once all the objects have appeared and disappeared, you have to click on the locations of the ones that match (like the Memory Game we played when we were younger).  I find I am a little better at this game although when the flowers are similar - like 3 yellow of a certain kind of flower and 1 yellow of another kind - it messes me up.  And the final game is Double Decision.  Two cars appear on the screen - one a truck with open bed and the other a delivery truck.  All around the trucks are signs with one of them a Route 66 sign.  The trucks and the signs flash on the screen, then go away.  You need to remember which car you saw and where the sign appeared on the screen.  I do ok with them until it gets real fast.  Then I find myself looking for the Rt. 66 sign and not paying attention to which truck was there!  Plus as the games go on, the backgrounds become more distracting.  It is interesting but not what I envisioned when I signed up for the study and thought I'd be playing games for an hour each day!  Don't know that my memory is improving but it sure makes me feel dumb some times.

I thought I'd share a couple of the Display Boards from Convention.  You can get a lot of great card ideas from these great boards!