An investigation into the impact of music on social exercise and music on performance and experience in exergames

• Main Author: Khan, Romana
• Published: Glasgow Caledonian University 2014
• Subjects: 613.7
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.636495

Overweight and obesity are the fifth leading risk factors for global deaths. At least 2.8 million adults die each year as a result of being overweight or obese. In addition, 44% of the diabetes burden, 23 % of the ischemic heart disease burden and between 7% and 41 % of certain cancer burdens are attributable to overweight and obesity (WHO, 2011). Overweight and obesity, as well as their related non-communicable diseases, are largely preventable through the pursuit of regular physical activity. Existing research has identified social exercise and music, as two key factors in encouraging participation and adherence to traditional exercise however in the context of exergames this area remains largely unexplored. The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of both social exercise and music in exergames. There are three main studies in this research that explore the objective and subjective assessment of social exercise and music on performance and experience of exercise in an exergame context by concentrating upon the physiological measures, performance measures and experience measures. All of the studies use quantitative methodology; they employ a repeated measures design. The first study sampled thirty University students and assessed their exergame experience in three sound conditions: no music, experimenter-selected music and self-selected music. The second and third study sampled twenty-six University students and assessed their exergame experience in the three aforementioned sound conditions as well as examining the impact of exercising with a friend in a co-located (study 2) and spatially separated setting (study 3). Results suggest that listening to music can facilitate exercise and exercise with a friend in a co-located setting can lead to greater performance and experience.