Researchers at the department of Human Movement Sciences, VU Amsterdam have received an NWO grant in the Open Technology Programme for a project which investigates how to best motivate rehabilitation patients.

Katinka van der Kooij, Jeroen Smeets, and Yannick Hill have received a grant for their project Room for Exercise Motivation with Variable Challenge, which investigates how to best motivate rehabilitation patients. Rehabilitation requires a lot of practice and it can be hard to stay motivated. It is unclear however what variation in challenge allows to motivate optimally. Therefore this project investigates how variation in challenge influences motivation.

About the project: Rehabilitation requires a lot of practice and it can be hard to stay motivated. Computer games that register movements and provide feedback on them can enhance motivation. They do this, for instance, by adapting the challenges to the player's performance. We know that it is on average optimal to provide positive feedback 8 out of 10 times. However, if we fixate the challenge to this optimum, the player doesn't experience performance improvement. It is unclear however what variation in challenge one should allow to motivate optimally. In this project, we investigate how variation in challenge influences motivation.

Read more about the project here: