Business and Knowledge of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Comissionat per a Universitats i Recerca del DIUE. We received financial and resource support from Mercurio Distribuciones (board and card games editorial). Mercurio Distribuciones provided the board and card games used in cognitive interventions. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Objectives The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a cognitive intervention based on modern board and card games. Methods We conducted two two‐arm parallel‐group, randomized controlled trials. The first one (pilot study) was nonblind. The second one (main study) was a double‐blind design. Participants (14 in a pilot study and 35 in the main study) were healthy older adults over 65 years old who were assisting to adult care institutions. In the pilot study, participants in the experimental group (n = 6) played modern board and card games which activated cognitive processes; whereas the control group (n = 6) was in the wait‐list condition. In the main study, participants in the experimental group (n = 12) also played modern board and card games; whereas the control group (n = 15) performed standardized paper‐and‐pencil cognitive tasks. Psychologists specialized in older‐people conducted all the interventions. In both studies, intervention sessions were bi‐weekly for 5 weeks. The outcomes of both studies were cognitive status and executive functioning, depressive symptomatology, and quality of life measures. All assessment and intervention sessions took place in their habitual centers. Results In the pilot study, participants in the games intervention showed a significant improvement in semantic verbal fluency. In the main study, both interventions showed significant improvements in phonemic verbal fluency. Whilst board and card games maintained motor impulsivity control, paper‐and‐pencil tasks improved speed in an inhibition task. Conclusions Modern board and card games could be an effective cognitive intervention to maintain some cognitive functions.

The use of modern board games has been growing last years in education, research, and mental health attendance. Often one professional selects games by his/her criteria depending on his/her objective with them. We evaluated the cognitive processes inherent to each modern board game to obtain a consensus of the cognitive profile of each. We explain how to choose the most suitable board games in future interventions.Fifteen education, mental health, and neuroscience research professionals with board games experience participated in an online assessment of 27 modern board games.Experts received a virtual neuroeducation formation and played the games selection for further analysis. Participants answered a Likert scale about 12 cognitive processes activated with each game. All modern board games obtained a high level of agreement (ICC>.75). Besides, most cognitive processes reached a high agreement, except for cognitive flexibility and problem-solving (moderate range; .5>ICC>.75). Differentiated cognitive profiles have been obtained for each game, some of which could work on more than one cognitive domain at a time. Finally, initial evidence about which board game mechanisms activates with cognitive domain was found. To conclude, this expert consensus methodology became a useful tool for assessing the cognitive profile behind modern board and card games. The results obtained may facilitate the choice of games to be used in future studies depending on the objective cognitive domain to be trained under a criterion based on the observations of a group of experts and not just the researcher's individual criteria.