Procedures
After the initial evaluations (session 2.2), the experimental
group participated in the SG program (session 2.3). Participants
were subjected to 20 individual sessions with the
game, lasting between 15 and 25 minutes, twice a week.
The first session was dedicated to participant familiarization.
During the game, the participants’ perceived level of
exertion, heart rate and blood pressure were monitored and
used to interrupt sessions, if necessary. The participants in
the control group did not undergo any treatment and were
instructed to maintain their usual routine (Fig. 1B).
Analysis
The statistical analyses were performed with GraphPad
Prism version 6 (GraphPad Software, Inc. USA). All parameters
were presented in terms of mean and standard deviation
(SD). After checking the normality of parameters, for each
group, the differences between the pretest and post-test
were conducted with a paired Student’s t-test with a significance
level set at 0.05. Finally, effect sizes (d) were
calculated to evaluate if differences observed corresponded
to important clinical effects [35]. Effect sizes of 0.2, 0.5 and
0.8 were regarded as small, medium and large degrees of
differences, respectively