Gaming helps personalized therapy level up

Study participant (face obscured) interacts with computer game system during testing of game features for possible use in improving physical and mental therapy. UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Using game features in non-game contexts, computers can learn to build personalized mentaland physical-therapy programs that enhance individual motivation, according to Penn State engineers. "We want to understand the human and team behaviors that motivate learning to ultimately develop personalized methods of learning instead of the one-size-fits-all approach that is often taken," said Conrad Tucker , assistant professor of engineering design, technology and professional programs. They seek to use machine learning to train computers to develop personalized mental or physical therapy regimens - for example, to overcome anxiety or recover from a shoulder injury - so many individuals can each use a tailor-made program. "Using people to individually evaluate others is not efficient or sustainable in time or human resources and does not scale up well to large numbers of people," said Tucker. "We need to train computers to read individual people.