Gamified Cognitive Bias Interventions for Psychiatric Disorders: Protocol of a Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: Cognitive bias modification has been increasingly studied in the past decade with reviews reporting the effectiveness of bias modification. Advances in electronic health and mobile health technologies have transformed how conventional cognitive bias modification is delivered. To date, gamification technologies and serious games have been widely evaluated in health care, and prior studies have reported the use of gamification for cognitive bias modification. However, no prior research, to date, has systematically evaluated the literature for gamified cognitive bias modification interventions. Objective: The proposed systematic review aims to review how gamification has been applied to cognitive bias modification interventions. Methods: A systematic review will be conducted. A search will be conducted on the respective databases till 2018. Selection of the studies will be determined by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis guidelines. Quality assessment of the included studies will be assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool. In addition, a narrative synthesis will be conducted. Results: We expect that the review will be completed 12 months from the publication of this protocol. Conclusions: The findings that arise from this review will be crucial as they will inform future research that seeks to integrate gamification technologies into existing conventional bias modification interventions. ©Melvyn Zhang, Jiangbo Ying, Roger CM Ho.