Home Page         What Is It?          History           Current Research        

How It Impacts The Brain        Case Studies          Issues             Gamification Conclusions

How Gaming Impacts Your Brain

Gamification is more than fun and, well...games. Physiological as well as neurological happenings take place in the bodies and minds of gamers. These happenings can influence motivation toward tasks, retention of information, and emotional responses. Understanding how gamification influences students as a whole can help educators make decisions when it comes to implementing the what, how, and when of the concept in their classrooms.

Video:  Your Brain on Video Games | Daphne Bavelier (TED Talk Video)

Bavelier, Daphne. (2012, November 19). Your Brain on Video Games. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FktsFcooIG8

Video Notes:

• Daphne Bavelier, Professor - University of Geneva that studies cognitive neuroscience.

• 90% of children play video games in the US .

• 70% of people who play video games are 30 years or older.

• “In reasonable doses, action packed shooter games have powerful and positive effects on our behavior.”

• Lab Research - Measured quantitatively what is the impact of video games on the brain?

• Myth:  Too much screen time makes eyesight worse:

• In some cases, vision is actually better.

• Able to resolve small detail in the context of clutter.

• Ability to resolve various levels of gray.

• Games are being developed for patients with low vision and hoping to retrain the brain to see better.

• Myth:  Games lead to attention problems and greater distractibility.

• Can measure attention in the lab.

• Gamers score better on these tests than non-gamers.

• Attention improved ability to keep track of up to 6 or 7 moving objects at a time.

• Gamers are better at multitasking.

• Also better at multimedia tasking:  Listen to music while searching the web, while talking on the phone.

• When consumed in reasonable doses, videogames can promote improvements in brain plasticity, learning, attention, and vision.

• Research - training studies (Mental Rotation of an object)

• Participants were given a pretest.

• Play 10 hours of games (nonconsecutive)

• Post test

• Results - participants performed better in posttest and still scored high even five months later.

Video Games:  Play That Can Do Serious Good.

Eichenbaum, A., Bavelier, D., & Green, C. S. (2014). Video games: Play that can do serious good. American Journal of Play, 7(1), 50.

Article Notes:

• Video games teach players to succeed.

• Designers make sure that players do fail but this failure does not seem insurmountable.

• What makes games effective teaching tools?

• Many hours spent on a task means more learning.

• Gamers play an average of 10 to 15 hours per week.

• Psychological needs fulfilled in gaming:

• Autonomy - One has control over their actions.

• Competence - Level of skill necessary to achieve a goal.

• Relatedness - Is socially connected to other humans

• When playing video games, the brain releases dopamines because of the reward component.  The release proves essential in permitting brain plasticity which leads to learning.

• Video games are also effective because it allows the player to choose the difficulty level.

• Cognitive Processing:

• Vision

• Action video games enhances several aspects of vision.

• Ability to detect changes in various shades of gray.

• Increases crowded acuity which is the ability to resolve small visual details in the presence of visual distractions.

• This is linked to reading.

• Improves visual selective attention.

• With many things going on at the same time, the individual is able to focus on one thing.

• Able to select relevant items and filter out irrelevant ones.

• Increases the ability to focus on objects across time.

• Increases the ability to attend to distinct spatial locations

• Track multiple objects at the same time.

• Attention

• In attention tasks, gamers respond much quicker and with greater accuracy than non gamers.

• Cognitive Flexibility

• Increased multitasking abilities

• Able to switch tasks quicker and easier.

• Conclusions

• Promotes improvements in abilities:

• Perceptual

• Attentional

• Cognitive

• Can help declining mental capabilities in old age.

• Promotes job related skills

• Model for how to teach students complex tasks.

Resources

Head Image, no attribution required, Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/head-brain-thoughts-human-body-1965676/