THE USE OF ELECTRONIC GAMES IN
COGNITIVE REHABILITATION
BACKGROUND
William J. Lynch, Ph.D.
Director, Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit
Veterans Administration Medical Center
Palo Alto, California
.BACKGROUND
William J. Lynch, Ph.D.
Director, Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit
Veterans Administration Medical Center
Palo Alto, California
.
In the early 1970's Atari, a once small electronics firm in
Sunnyvale, California, developed and marketed the first commercially
successful video game. Referred to as Pong, this video version of
ping-pong paved the way for numerous other games which soon appeared
in taverns, arcades, airport lobbies, and college dormitories
throughout the country. Although Pong remains quite popular, there
are now over 40 different Atari videogame programs varying from
simple word games (Hangman) to complex games of strategy such as
chess (Video Chess) or tic-tac-toe (3-D Tic-Tac-Toe). Each program
contains variations both in number of players (1 to 4) and level of
difficulty (slow or fast speed; larger or smaller light "paddle").
Some (Video Olympics) have as many as 50 variations from which to
choose.
A recent issue of Mechanix Illustrated (Perry, 1980) was
devoted to the topic of home computers and electronic games. It was
revealed that, whereas in 1977 there were but six hand-held electronic
games on the market, by 1980 the number had expanded to 420.
The number of hand-held electronics games purchased in 1978 was over
five million. By 1979 the number had nearly doubled to ten million;
and by 1980, the total had increased to between 13 and 15 million.
The amount of money spent for these games in 1980 was about 800
million dollars--and represented the largest total earned by any
single toy type.
Although there have been occasional references to the use of
video games in research, there have been no published reports of
their use as rehabilitation techniques in a substantial series of
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L. E. Trexler (ed.), Cognitive Rehabilitation
© Plenum Press, New York 1982