MONDAY, Feb. 3, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Video games can provide a novel mechanism to improve stroke knowledge among children, according to a study published online Jan. 30 in Stroke.
Olajide Williams, M.D., from Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, and colleagues evaluated actionable stroke knowledge of 210 children aged 9 to 10 years following a single 15-minute exposure to a stroke education video game conducted in the school computer lab. Remote access to the video game was provided after immediate post-exposure testing. Knowledge was evaluated before the screening (210 children), immediately after the screening (205 children), and seven weeks later (198 children).
The researchers found that, across the testing sequence, there was significant improvement of stroke symptom composite scores, calling 911, and all individual stroke knowledge items, including a distractor (P < 0.05). Compared to children who only had a single exposure to the video game, children who played the video game remotely demonstrated significant improvement in knowledge of the symptom of sudden imbalance (P < 0.05), although overall composite scores were not different.
"Stroke education video games may represent novel means for improving and sustaining actionable stroke knowledge of children," the authors write.
Abstract
Full Text
