The influence of visual working memory on Mahjong and its video game version—leisure activities for the elderly

In the Chinese community, mahjong is a traditional game for recreation and entertainment, and also an important leisure activity to elderly people. The major difference between the video game version of mahjong and the general type, is that the video game version does not require the time to shuffle tiles, and the delays caused by human factors are reduced. As a result the eyes relatively have less time to rest. Furthermore in the video game version, the time for melds and discarding tiles are limited (the limit time for thinking is 3–8 seconds based with the selected game level), which relatively increase the pressure. Second, due to visual and sound effects, the video game version of mahjong increases the tension in playing. In this study, 12 elderly people of age 65 and older, which their visual senses are sufficiently capable to continuously play mahjong for more than 2 hours, were selected as subjects for research. In addition, the subjects all have more than one year of experience in playing mahjong. The variables in this study include environmental illumination, the duration of playing (mahjong), and playing either the video game version or the general mahjong game. Meanwhile, the influences of these variables toward the working memory corrective ratio for elderly people were also discussed. The study also may serve as a reference in designing environmental illumination and the duration for elderly people playing mahjong.