Parents May No Longer Argue Gamers Indulge in Brainless Activities

Author: Kyoto University
Published: 2022/09/08 - Updated: 2023/01/04
Peer Reviewed Publication: Yes
Category Topic: Accessible Games and Gaming - Academic Publications

Page Content: Synopsis - Introduction - Main

Synopsis: Video games can be made to engage and characterize distinct cognitive abilities while still retaining the entertainment value that popular titles offer. To make these connections between complex gameplay and interpretable cognitive characteristics, the team combined the use of data from Potion, a 3-D action video game by BonBon Inc, and WebCNP, conventional cognitive tests maintained by the University of Pennsylvania.

Defining Cognition

Cognition: Cognition refers to the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. Cognition encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as perception, attention, thought, intelligence, knowledge formation, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem-solving and decision-making, comprehension, and language production. Imagination is also a cognitive process; it is considered such because it involves thinking about possibilities. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and discover new knowledge.

Introduction

Parents and pundits - a pundit is a person who offers mass media opinion or commentary on a particular subject area - may no longer argue that gamers indulge in brainless activities in front of their screens. And gamers may finally feel a sense of vindication.

Main Content

Kyoto University and BonBon Inc, a Kyoto-based healthcare-related IT company, have now teamed up to show that multiple cognitive abilities may be empirically measured from a complex game experience depending on the game's design.

"Video games can be made to engage and characterize distinct cognitive abilities while still retaining the entertainment value that popular titles offer," says Tomihiro Ono, lead author of the joint study in Scientific Reports.

He adds:

"For example, we found that there are in-game micro-level connections such as between stealth behavior and abstract thinking, aiming and attention, and targeting and visual discrimination."

To make these connections between complex gameplay and interpretable cognitive characteristics, the team combined the use of data from Potion, a 3-D action video game by BonBon Inc, and WebCNP, conventional cognitive tests maintained by the University of Pennsylvania.

Although existing literature and general beliefs regarding similar action video games already suggest the advantage that younger males may have over other demographic groups, the researchers did not expect to obtain measurements reflecting stark differences even after accounting for the gaming experience.

"The lack of a connection between cognitive abilities and video game elements in aged players came as a surprise," Ono notes.

To attain more scientific insight into gamers' psyche, such as why computer games positively influence some players, the researchers posit that studies using games ought to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches, as demographic factors and game experience can be assumed to affect results.

"We think that a granular understanding of cognitive engagement in video games has the potential to benefit such research areas as psychiatry, psychology, and education," concludes the author.

The Paper:

"Novel 3‐D action video game mechanics reveal differentiable cognitive constructs in young players, but not in old" appeared on 21 July 2022 in Scientific Reports.

Related Information

Attribution/Source(s): This peer reviewed publication was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World (DW) due to its relevance to the disability community. Originally authored by Kyoto University and published on 2022/09/08, this content may have been edited for style, clarity, or brevity.