Video games as tools to achieve insight into cognitive processes

Frontiers in Psychology

Walter R. Boot¹ 

关键词: video games;    cognitive;    entertainment;    cognitive processes;    human cognition;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00003

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Though traditionally designed for entertainment purposes, video games are increasingly being used by psychologists to aid in our understanding of skill acquisition, cognitive capacity and plasticity, development and aging, and individual differences. Work by Green and Bavelier (2003), now published over a decade ago, generated a great deal of interest by psychologists (and the general public) and an influx of researchers into this domain. However, the tradition of using video games to understand, measure, and improve cognition goes back to at least the mid-to-late 1980s (e.g., Griffith et al., 1983; Gagnon, 1985; Metalis, 1985; Dorval and Pepin, 1986; Clark et al., 1987). The most notable, systematic attempt to use a video game to understand human cognition and performance was the Learning Strategies Program, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Donchin et al., 1989). Out of this project came the Space Fortress video game, which was developed by cognitive psychologists and designed to require skills such as memory, attention, dual-tasking ability, and psychomotor control and speed. Space Fortress served as a standardized task so performance could be compared across labs (and across continents) to understand the best methods to train complex skill, the relationship between fundamental abilities (e.g., fluid intelligence) and skill development, and the degree to which training gains and task mastery transfer beyond the trained task. Space Fortress is still used across many labs today (e.g., Blumen et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2012; Scheldrup et al., 2014), and has been one of the few video games to be played while functional magnetic resonance imaging has been recorded (e.g., Voss et al., 2012).

【 授权许可】

CC BY