Still no evidence that exergames improve cognitive ability: A commentary on Stanmore et al. (2017)

Sala, Giovanni, Tatlidil, K. Semir and Gobet, Fernand ORCID: 0000-0002-9317-6886 (2019) Still no evidence that exergames improve cognitive ability: A commentary on Stanmore et al. (2017). Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. ISSN 0149-7634

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Abstract

A recent meta-analysis (Stanmore et al. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 78:34–43, 2017) claimed that exergames exert medium-size positive effects on people's overall cognitive function. The present article critically tests this claim. We argue that the meta-analysis reported inflated effect sizes mainly for three reasons: (a) some effect sizes were miscalculated; (b) there was an excessive amount of true heterogeneity; and (c) no publication-bias-corrected estimates were provided. We have thus recalculated the effect sizes and reanalyzed the data using a more robust approach and more sophisticated techniques. Compared to Stanmore's et al., our models show that: (a) the overall effect sizes are substantially smaller; (b) the amount of true heterogeneity, when any, is much lower; and (c) the publication-bias analyses suggest that the actual effect of exergames on overall cognitive function is slim to null. Therefore, the cognitive benefits of exergames are far from being established.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	CPNSS
Date Deposited:	20 Jan 2020 15:21
Last Modified:	11 Sep 2025 10:10
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/103135

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