Exergames in motor skill learning.

IntroductionExergaming, by joining physical activity with Natural User Interfaces and Gesture Recognition technology, addresses the fundamental questions of perception and phenomenology in a digital context, with awareness that embodied actions within a digital media interface are "fluid and functional crossings between virtual and physical realms. " (Hansen 2006)"Natural User Interface is the next metaphysical paradigm shiftin man machine interaction (MMI) also known as human computer interaction (HCI). Beginning with the Command Line Interface (CLI) and followed by the Graphical User Interface (GUI), we are now in the midst of discovering the next phase of a more organic interfaces which are based on more traditional human interaction paradigms such as touch, vision, speech and most importantly creativity. " (NUIGroup 2009)The Natural User Interfaces include input and output based on touch, voice, movements and move towards an efficient use of the senses in the interaction with machines.The origin of term "exergame" is uncertain: as noted Sinclair, earliest citation of "exergame", according to Wordspy website, is by RajuNudhar on the Toronto Star in 2004.In a bid to unite jocks with nerds in a way never seen before, Toronto-based Nexfit has introduced Canada's first exer-gaming bike. At its most basic, the product is an exercise bike that hooks up to a personal computer. The bike serves as a giant joystick. You use the handlebars as the controller, and above the right hand grip are the traditional joystick controls with a trigger button. For racing games, the pedals of the bike serve as the accelerator. There are also "force feedback" simulators so the rumble effect you get on a console's controller is emulated by the entire bike.RajuNudhar, "In hot pursuit of the Holodeck," The Toronto Star, April 20, 2004Sinclair also noted as "exergames are also referred to using the following terms; Activity promoting video games (Lanningham-Foster, Jensen et al.); interactive video games (Hoysniemi, 2006; Luke,2005), and exertion interfaces (Mueller, Agamanolis et al. 2003 2003, Yang, Smith et al. 2008). "(Sinclair 2011)In a study on the definition of exergames, Oh and Yang(Oh and Yang 2010) have proposed a classification of terms with which exergames are referred in scientific studies, distinguishing between health-related contexts and non health-related contexts. These terms are: Exergame, Exertainment, Dance simulation video game , Interactive video game, Activity promoting video game, Active video game, Physical gaming, Kinaesthetic of video gaming, Physical activity-change games.Given this state of the art, we agree with Yang (Yang, Smith et al. 2008), in affirming that this area of study "is still in its infancy". The definition of exergame used herein was provided by Bogost:"Exergaming is the combination of exercise and video games" (Bogost 2007)It should be emphasized, however, as exergames involve the whole body of the player in the human-machine interaction process, making use of special devices such as MicrosoftKinect, the Nintendo Wiimote and BalanceBoard, just to mention the most well-known. (Di Tore and Raiola 2012)MethodsThis paper presents an excursus of the literature on exergames and summarizes the state of the art of research in this field, in an effort to identify the theoretical and didactic foundations of exergames design, in order to see if there are exergames that are attributable to a specific theoretical framework within Physical Education or that are specifically oriented to teaching or rehabilitation.This work intends to provide a preliminary analysis of the scientific literature on the subject of exergames, in order to verify whether there are scientific works in which have been studied and presented exergames specifically designed for educational purposes or rehabilitation purposes.ResultsSince the first deployment, exergames have received, in science, a positive reception, by virtue of two factors:involvement in the field of gaming the entire body of the player is a powerful tool in the longstanding battle against sedentary lifestyle (Chamberlin and Gallagher 2008);the level of user involvement, already high in traditional videogames, with exergames becomes even more valuable due to the NUIs (Baranowski, Buday et al. …