Preliminary validation of CCRacer serious game for assessing executive function after acquired brain injury

Acquired brain injuries can profoundly impact executive functioning, yet traditional neuropsychological assessments often have limitations, such as being time-intensive, lacking ecological validity, or failing to engage patients effectively. To address these challenges, CCRacer, a serious game, was developed as a novel tool for assessing executive functions in clinical populations. This study evaluated the convergent and discriminant validity of CCRacer by applying it alongside established neuropsychological tests to a sample of 78 participants with acquired brain injury. Results revealed varying levels of convergent validity across tasks, with stronger correlations for measures of working memory (0.28-0.51) and planning (-0.46 to 0.34) and weaker correlations for inhibitory control (0.22). These findings suggest that CCRacer has the potential as a complementary tool in the neuropsychological assessment of an acquired brain injury, combining engaging and ecologically valid testing with the possibility of future use in cognitive training.