GAMES FOR HEALTH JOURNAL: Research, Development, and Clinical Applications Volume 1, Number 6, 2012 ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089/g4h.2012.0064
The Upside of Videogame Playing Linda A. Jackson, PhD
Abstract
In our research on the relationship between videogame playing and cognitive outcomes we found that children (n = 481, 12 year olds) who played videogames more were more creative than those who played them less. Here we summarize these findings and propose new research to identify mediating cognitive factors influenced by videogame playing.
The Issue of Concern and an Explanation of Its Importance (e.g., the Value of Videogames to Improving Youth’s Cognitive Skills)
W
hat is the upside of videogame playing? Most of the psychological research on children’s videogame playing has focused on violent videogames and their adverse effects, namely, aggressive cognition and behavior. Few studies have noted that violence does not characterize all of the many genres of videogames (e.g., sports, tactical, maze, roleplaying, and simulation genres). No studies mention that the effect size of playing violent videogames on aggressive cognition and behavior is only one-half the effect size of watching violent TV.1 As Lewis et al.,2 in a computational analysis studying 2,000 videogame players, stated, ‘‘There has been a lot of attention wasted in figuring out whether these things turn us into killing machines..Not enough attention has been paid to the unique and interesting features that videogames have outside of the violence.’’ Why study the effects of videogame playing more broadly to include possible beneficial effects and other than psychological effects (e.g., physical outcomes like health)? Commercial data speak clearly to this question. Electronic gaming is now a $25 billion/year entertainment business. Millions of people immerse themselves in the interactive reward conditioning of electronic game play. Multiplayer, role-playing fantasy games, such as the ‘‘League of Legend,’’ have been played about 1 billion times since their introduction 2 years ago. Today’s average gamer is 34 years old and has been playing since age 22, often up to 18 hours a week. By one analyst’s calculation, the 11 million or so registered users of the online role-playing fantasy game, ‘‘World of Warcraft,’’ have collectively spent as much time playing the game since its introduction in 2004 as humanity has spent evolving as a species—about 50 billion hours of game time, which adds up to about 5.9 million years.3 If these statistics are not convincing about the importance of understanding videogame playing effects, perhaps some of
the research findings will be. ‘‘Videogames change your brain,’’ says Green and Bavelier,4 who studied how electronic games affect a variety of cognitive abilities. In this sense they are no different than learning to read, playing the piano, or navigating the streets of London, all of which have been shown to change the brain’s physical structure. Bavelier et al.5 have stated that ‘‘The powerful combination of concentration and rewarding surges of neurotransmitters like dopamine strengthen neural circuits in much the same way that exercise builds muscles. But games definitely hit the reward system in a way that not all activities do.’’ In an full-page article in the Wall Street Journal, titled ‘‘When Gaming Is Good for You,’’ Hotz6 introduces the topic of videogame playing with the following paragraph: ‘‘A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception. The specific benefits are wide ranging, from improved hand-eye coordination in surgeons to vision changes that boost night driving ability.’’7 Adults who play action-based videogames, a category that includes violent videogames, made decisions 25 percent faster than their nonplayer peers and, remarkably, without sacrificing accuracy. The best of the action videogamers can make choices and act on them up to six times a second, which is four times faster than the average person.8 They can also attend to more than six things simultaneously without getting confused, compared with the four things that the average person can simultaneously keep in mind.9–11 Females who play videogames (42 percent of the videogame playing population) are better able to mentally manipulate three-dimensional objects, a visual-spatial skill at which males typically excel, compared with females who do not play videogames.12 This finding is particularly important because visual-spatial skills are considered by many to be the ‘‘training wheels’’ for performance in science, technology, engineering and mathematics—the areas that so many educators and policy-makers are trying to increase through formal education.13,14
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
452
THE UPSIDE OF VIDEOGAME PLAYING Intended Benefits of Research Unlike the majority of previous research, which used young adult (e.g., college students) or adult participants and focused on negative effects of violent videogame playing, our research used 12-year-old children and focused on potential, multiple cognitive benefits of technology use, including, in addition to videogame playing, Internet and cell phone use. This research was based in part on our previous research (2000–2003, the HomeNetToo Project) (www.msu.edu/user/ jackso67/homenettoo), which found that home Internet use by middle school children from low-income families improved grade point averages and scores on standardized tests of reading, but not mathematics, over a 16-month trial.15–17 We included creativity as a potential positive outcome in this follow-up research, the Children and Technology Project (www.msu.edu/user/jackso67/CT/children), for a variety of reasons. First, creativity has been related to making improbable choices, which is often necessary for success in videogames.18 Second, playing videogames and technology use in general often require creative solutions to novel problems.18,19 For example, clicking on the START button to SHUT DOWN your computer and then rebooting to solve technical problems that occurred before the shut down seems an improbable solution to the original problem. Third and anecdotally, our own experiences with videogames and the experiences of our children hinted that there was something ‘‘special’’ about videogames that provoked thinking in new ways. Description of Research Participants in our research were 12 year olds (n = 491), of whom 53 percent were female, and 34 percent were African American and 66 percent were white. Participants were recruited from 20 middle schools in southern lower Michigan and from YouthVille Detroit, an afterschool center for underserved groups in Detroit, MI.20 After informed consent was obtained, Parent and Child Surveys were mailed to the home twice a year for three consecutive years. Once in each year children completed the Torrance Test of Creativity,21 in which they responded to two target stimuli: an ‘‘Egg’’ and a picture of an ‘‘Elf’’ looking into a puddle of water. Children were asked to extend the Egg shape into a picture, label the picture, and write a story about it. For the Elf stimulus, they were asked to write questions about what was happening, what were potential causes of what was happening, and what possibilities existed in the future based on the picture. Children’s open-ended responses to the creativity stimuli (Egg and Elf ) were coded by six trained undergraduates supervised by a trained graduate student. Coding was based on the following categories and scales suggested by Torrance21: Overall creativity (1 = not at all creative, 2 = creative, 3 = very creative); Fluency (number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus); Flexibility (number of different categories of relevant responses); Originality (rarity or unusualness of responses) (1 = not unusual or rare, 2 = unusual and rare, 3 = very unusual and very rare); Elaboration (the degree of detail in the responses) (1 = low elaboration, 2 = moderate elaboration, 3 = high elaboration); and Mean Number of Words in the story. Children indicated the extent of their computer, Internet, videogame, and cell phone use on 7-point scales, where
453 1 = not at all, 2 = about once a month, 3 = a few times a month, 4 = a few times a week, 5 = every day, but for less than 1 hour, 6 = every day, for 1–3 hours, and 7 = every day, for more than 3 hours. They were also asked to indicate their favorite videogame. The same coders as for the creativity stimuli coded favorite videogames into one of the following mutually exclusive categories, keeping in mind that genre categorization for videogames is based on game play interaction rather than on visual or narrative differences21: 1. Violent videogames. Games in this category include firstperson shooter games and games in which violence is at the core of game play. Examples of games named by participants that fell into this category are ‘‘Zelda’’ and ‘‘Super Smash Brothers.’’ 2. Action-adventure videogames. Games in this category typically involve role-playing, strategy, and problemsolving to ‘‘win’’ the game. Examples of games in this category from our participants are ‘‘Half-Life 2’’ and ‘‘Star Wars.’’ 3. Racing/driving videogames. Driving and race simulation games fall into this category. Examples are ‘‘Need for Speed’’ and ‘‘Big Mutha Truckers II.’’ 4. Sports videogames. Games in this category include all types of sports/athletic games. Among our participants the most popular games in this category were those involving NBA basketball and NFL football. 5. Interpersonal videogames. Games that involve interpersonal relationships or caring for others, humans or nonhumans, are included in the category. Examples from our participants are ‘‘Sims’’ and ‘‘Animal Crossing.’’ 6. Other videogames. Games that did not fit into any or the preceding five categories were placed in this category. Examples are ‘‘Parkalline’’ and ‘‘Spider Solitaire.’’ Sociodemographic information was obtained by asking the children to indicate their gender, race/ethnicity, and age. Only those participants who indicated that their race/ethnicity was African American or white were included in the analyses that follow (i.e., 491 of the 591 child participants). Information about household income was obtained from the Parent Survey. Parents indicated their total net annual household income using the following scale: 1 = under $20,000, 2 = $20,000–49,999, 3 = $50,000–79,999, 4 = $80,000– 99,000, 5 = $100,000–149,999, 6 = $150,000–200,000, and 7 = over $200,000. Results Predicting creativity from technology use Hierarchical regression analyses were used to predict each measure of creativity from the four measures of technology use. Race and income were controlled (i.e., entered in Step 1) only for the creativity measure that showed relationships with these two sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., Elf questions creativity). Results indicated that videogame playing was the sole predictor of Egg story creativity, Elf causes creativity, Elf possibilities creativity, number of words in Egg story, and number of questions, causes, and possibilities for the Elf stimulus. Videogame playing continued to predict Elf questions creativity even after the effects of income on this measure were controlled (standard beta = 22, P < 0.01). Moreover, the race effect on this measure was reduced to
454 nonsignificance when income was controlled (P > 0.10). Gender and race had no effects on the ability of videogame playing to predict creativity. Regression analyses to predict creativity from the six types of videogames indicated that all except racing/driving games predicted all measures of creativity. Racing/driving games did, however, predict two measures of creativity: Elf possibilities and number of words in the Egg story. Thus, regardless of the type of videogame, more videogame playing was associated with greater creativity. Conclusions and Recommendations for Future Research Our findings indicate that children’s videogame playing has a favorable impact on the cognitive outcome, creativity. One question for future research is ‘‘Why?’’ What mediates the relationship between videogame playing and creativity? We mentioned a few suspects earlier in this report, the most promising of which is visual-spatial skills. Does videogame playing increase visual-spatial skills, and do these skills mediate the relationship between videogame playing and creativity, measured in a variety of ways? Another potential positive cognitive outcome of videogame playing that we propose to investigate is computational thinking. There exists in the literature dozens of definitions of what computational thinking is and is not (e.g., a Google search produced 1,510,000 hits). According to Wikipedia, ‘‘Computational Thinking is a new way of solving problems that gets its name because it uses many of the same techniques used by computer science.’’ The term was first used by Seymour Papert.22 It has since achieved prominence due largely to the efforts of Jeannette M. Wing23 at the National Science Foundation and at Carnegie Mellon who stated in her ELI presentation ( January 21, 2010) that in the 21st century Computational thinking will be a fundamental skill used by everyone in the world. To reading, writing, and arithmetic, let’s add computational thinking to every child’s analytical ability. Computational thinking is an approach to solving problems, building systems, and understanding human behavior that draws on the power and limits of computing. Computational thinking requires thinking abstractly and thinking at multiple levels of abstraction. It represents a universally applicable attitude and skill set everyone, not just computer scientists, would be eager to learn and use.23
Does videogame playing or, more precisely, videogame creation increase computational thinking skills? We have already designed several studies to address this question. Author Disclosure Statement No competing financial interests exist. References 1. Gee H. What Videogames Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (revised and updated edition). New York: Palgrave Macmillan; 2007. 2. Lewis JM, Trinh P, Kirsh D. A corpus analysis of strategy video game play in Starcraft: Brood War. In: Carlson L, Ho¨lscher C, Shipley T. eds. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society; 2011; pp 687–692.
JACKSON 3. Entertainment Software Association. 2012. www.theesa .com/ (accessed October 9, 2012). 4. Green CS, Bavelier D. Action video experience alters the spatial resolution of vision. Psychol Sci 2007; 18:88–94. 5. Bavelier GD, Green CS, Pouget A, Schrater P. Brain plasticity through the life span: Learning to learn and action video games. Annu Rev Neurosci 2012; 35:391–416. 6. Hotz RL. When gaming is good for you. Hours of intense play change the adult brain; better multitasking, decisionmaking and even creativity. Wall Street J March 6, 2012. (http://www.rlleaders.com/news/2012-press/when-gamingis-good-for-you/) 7. Green CS, Pouget A, Bavelier D. Improved probabilistic inference as a general learning mechanism with action video games. Curr Biol 2010; 23:1573–1579. 8. Green CS, Bavelier D. The cognitive neuroscience of video games. In: Messaris P, Humphreys L, eds. Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc; 2006; pp 211–220. 9. Green CS, Bavelier D. Effect of action video games on the spatial distribution of visuospatial attention. J Exp Psychol 2006; 32:1465–1468. 10. Spence I, Feng J. Video games and spatial cognition. Rev Gen Psychol 2010; 14:92–104. 11. Dye MWG, Green CS, Bavelier D. The development of attention skills in action video game players. Neuropsychologia 2009: 47:1780–1789. 12. Messaris P, Humphreys L, eds. Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc; 2006. 13. ExcelQuest. STEM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). http://excel-quest.org/Education_ Support.html (accessed October 9, 2011). 14. Subrahmanyam K, Greenfield PM. Effect of video game practice on spatial skills in girls and boys. J Appl Dev Psychol 1994; 15:13–32. 15. Jackson LA, von Eye A, Fitzgerald HE, et al. (2009). Videogame playing, cell phone use and academic performance: Some good news. In: Proceedings of the International Association for the Development of Information Systems: IADIS International Conference e-Society 2009, Barcelona, Spain, February 25–28. Barcelona, Spain: IADIS Digital Library, 2009. www.iadisportal.org/digital-library (accessed November 15, 2009). 16. Jackson LA, Zhao Y, Fitzgerald HE, et al. The impact of information technology (IT) use on children’s cognitive, social, psychological and moral development. In: Morgan K, Brebbia CA, Spector JM, eds. WWW: The Internet Society II: Advances in Education, Commerce and Governance. Southampton, UK: WIT Press; 2006: 23–32. 17. Jackson LA, von Eye A, Biocca FA, et al. Does home Internet use influence the academic performance of low-income children? Findings from the HomeNetToo project. Dev Psychol 2006; 42:429–435. 18. Mueller JS, Melwani S, Goncalo JA. The bias against creativity: Why people desire but reject creative ideas. Psychol Sci 2012; 23:13–17. 19. Tschang, FT. Balancing the tensions between rationalization and creativity in the video games industry. Organization Science 2007; 18:989–1005. 20. Jackson LA, Witt EA, Games A, Fitzgerald HE, von Eye A. Technology use and creativity: Findings from the Children and Technology Project. Comput Hum Behav 2011; 29: 343–350.
THE UPSIDE OF VIDEOGAME PLAYING 21. Torrance EP. Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Bensenville, IL: Scholastic Testing; 1987. 22. Papert S. An exploration in the space of mathematics education. International Journal of Computers for Mathematical Learning 1996; 1:95–123. 23. Wing JM. Viewpoint: Computational thinking. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2006; 49:33–35.
455 Address correspondence to: Linda A. Jackson, PhD Department of Psychology Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824 E-mail: [email protected]
The Upside of Videogame Playing Linda A. Jackson, PhD
Abstract
In our research on the relationship between videogame playing and cognitive outcomes we found that children (n = 481, 12 year olds) who played videogames more were more creative than those who played them less. Here we summarize these findings and propose new research to identify mediating cognitive factors influenced by videogame playing.
The Issue of Concern and an Explanation of Its Importance (e.g., the Value of Videogames to Improving Youth’s Cognitive Skills)
W
hat is the upside of videogame playing? Most of the psychological research on children’s videogame playing has focused on violent videogames and their adverse effects, namely, aggressive cognition and behavior. Few studies have noted that violence does not characterize all of the many genres of videogames (e.g., sports, tactical, maze, roleplaying, and simulation genres). No studies mention that the effect size of playing violent videogames on aggressive cognition and behavior is only one-half the effect size of watching violent TV.1 As Lewis et al.,2 in a computational analysis studying 2,000 videogame players, stated, ‘‘There has been a lot of attention wasted in figuring out whether these things turn us into killing machines..Not enough attention has been paid to the unique and interesting features that videogames have outside of the violence.’’ Why study the effects of videogame playing more broadly to include possible beneficial effects and other than psychological effects (e.g., physical outcomes like health)? Commercial data speak clearly to this question. Electronic gaming is now a $25 billion/year entertainment business. Millions of people immerse themselves in the interactive reward conditioning of electronic game play. Multiplayer, role-playing fantasy games, such as the ‘‘League of Legend,’’ have been played about 1 billion times since their introduction 2 years ago. Today’s average gamer is 34 years old and has been playing since age 22, often up to 18 hours a week. By one analyst’s calculation, the 11 million or so registered users of the online role-playing fantasy game, ‘‘World of Warcraft,’’ have collectively spent as much time playing the game since its introduction in 2004 as humanity has spent evolving as a species—about 50 billion hours of game time, which adds up to about 5.9 million years.3 If these statistics are not convincing about the importance of understanding videogame playing effects, perhaps some of
the research findings will be. ‘‘Videogames change your brain,’’ says Green and Bavelier,4 who studied how electronic games affect a variety of cognitive abilities. In this sense they are no different than learning to read, playing the piano, or navigating the streets of London, all of which have been shown to change the brain’s physical structure. Bavelier et al.5 have stated that ‘‘The powerful combination of concentration and rewarding surges of neurotransmitters like dopamine strengthen neural circuits in much the same way that exercise builds muscles. But games definitely hit the reward system in a way that not all activities do.’’ In an full-page article in the Wall Street Journal, titled ‘‘When Gaming Is Good for You,’’ Hotz6 introduces the topic of videogame playing with the following paragraph: ‘‘A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception. The specific benefits are wide ranging, from improved hand-eye coordination in surgeons to vision changes that boost night driving ability.’’7 Adults who play action-based videogames, a category that includes violent videogames, made decisions 25 percent faster than their nonplayer peers and, remarkably, without sacrificing accuracy. The best of the action videogamers can make choices and act on them up to six times a second, which is four times faster than the average person.8 They can also attend to more than six things simultaneously without getting confused, compared with the four things that the average person can simultaneously keep in mind.9–11 Females who play videogames (42 percent of the videogame playing population) are better able to mentally manipulate three-dimensional objects, a visual-spatial skill at which males typically excel, compared with females who do not play videogames.12 This finding is particularly important because visual-spatial skills are considered by many to be the ‘‘training wheels’’ for performance in science, technology, engineering and mathematics—the areas that so many educators and policy-makers are trying to increase through formal education.13,14
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
452
THE UPSIDE OF VIDEOGAME PLAYING Intended Benefits of Research Unlike the majority of previous research, which used young adult (e.g., college students) or adult participants and focused on negative effects of violent videogame playing, our research used 12-year-old children and focused on potential, multiple cognitive benefits of technology use, including, in addition to videogame playing, Internet and cell phone use. This research was based in part on our previous research (2000–2003, the HomeNetToo Project) (www.msu.edu/user/ jackso67/homenettoo), which found that home Internet use by middle school children from low-income families improved grade point averages and scores on standardized tests of reading, but not mathematics, over a 16-month trial.15–17 We included creativity as a potential positive outcome in this follow-up research, the Children and Technology Project (www.msu.edu/user/jackso67/CT/children), for a variety of reasons. First, creativity has been related to making improbable choices, which is often necessary for success in videogames.18 Second, playing videogames and technology use in general often require creative solutions to novel problems.18,19 For example, clicking on the START button to SHUT DOWN your computer and then rebooting to solve technical problems that occurred before the shut down seems an improbable solution to the original problem. Third and anecdotally, our own experiences with videogames and the experiences of our children hinted that there was something ‘‘special’’ about videogames that provoked thinking in new ways. Description of Research Participants in our research were 12 year olds (n = 491), of whom 53 percent were female, and 34 percent were African American and 66 percent were white. Participants were recruited from 20 middle schools in southern lower Michigan and from YouthVille Detroit, an afterschool center for underserved groups in Detroit, MI.20 After informed consent was obtained, Parent and Child Surveys were mailed to the home twice a year for three consecutive years. Once in each year children completed the Torrance Test of Creativity,21 in which they responded to two target stimuli: an ‘‘Egg’’ and a picture of an ‘‘Elf’’ looking into a puddle of water. Children were asked to extend the Egg shape into a picture, label the picture, and write a story about it. For the Elf stimulus, they were asked to write questions about what was happening, what were potential causes of what was happening, and what possibilities existed in the future based on the picture. Children’s open-ended responses to the creativity stimuli (Egg and Elf ) were coded by six trained undergraduates supervised by a trained graduate student. Coding was based on the following categories and scales suggested by Torrance21: Overall creativity (1 = not at all creative, 2 = creative, 3 = very creative); Fluency (number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus); Flexibility (number of different categories of relevant responses); Originality (rarity or unusualness of responses) (1 = not unusual or rare, 2 = unusual and rare, 3 = very unusual and very rare); Elaboration (the degree of detail in the responses) (1 = low elaboration, 2 = moderate elaboration, 3 = high elaboration); and Mean Number of Words in the story. Children indicated the extent of their computer, Internet, videogame, and cell phone use on 7-point scales, where
453 1 = not at all, 2 = about once a month, 3 = a few times a month, 4 = a few times a week, 5 = every day, but for less than 1 hour, 6 = every day, for 1–3 hours, and 7 = every day, for more than 3 hours. They were also asked to indicate their favorite videogame. The same coders as for the creativity stimuli coded favorite videogames into one of the following mutually exclusive categories, keeping in mind that genre categorization for videogames is based on game play interaction rather than on visual or narrative differences21: 1. Violent videogames. Games in this category include firstperson shooter games and games in which violence is at the core of game play. Examples of games named by participants that fell into this category are ‘‘Zelda’’ and ‘‘Super Smash Brothers.’’ 2. Action-adventure videogames. Games in this category typically involve role-playing, strategy, and problemsolving to ‘‘win’’ the game. Examples of games in this category from our participants are ‘‘Half-Life 2’’ and ‘‘Star Wars.’’ 3. Racing/driving videogames. Driving and race simulation games fall into this category. Examples are ‘‘Need for Speed’’ and ‘‘Big Mutha Truckers II.’’ 4. Sports videogames. Games in this category include all types of sports/athletic games. Among our participants the most popular games in this category were those involving NBA basketball and NFL football. 5. Interpersonal videogames. Games that involve interpersonal relationships or caring for others, humans or nonhumans, are included in the category. Examples from our participants are ‘‘Sims’’ and ‘‘Animal Crossing.’’ 6. Other videogames. Games that did not fit into any or the preceding five categories were placed in this category. Examples are ‘‘Parkalline’’ and ‘‘Spider Solitaire.’’ Sociodemographic information was obtained by asking the children to indicate their gender, race/ethnicity, and age. Only those participants who indicated that their race/ethnicity was African American or white were included in the analyses that follow (i.e., 491 of the 591 child participants). Information about household income was obtained from the Parent Survey. Parents indicated their total net annual household income using the following scale: 1 = under $20,000, 2 = $20,000–49,999, 3 = $50,000–79,999, 4 = $80,000– 99,000, 5 = $100,000–149,999, 6 = $150,000–200,000, and 7 = over $200,000. Results Predicting creativity from technology use Hierarchical regression analyses were used to predict each measure of creativity from the four measures of technology use. Race and income were controlled (i.e., entered in Step 1) only for the creativity measure that showed relationships with these two sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., Elf questions creativity). Results indicated that videogame playing was the sole predictor of Egg story creativity, Elf causes creativity, Elf possibilities creativity, number of words in Egg story, and number of questions, causes, and possibilities for the Elf stimulus. Videogame playing continued to predict Elf questions creativity even after the effects of income on this measure were controlled (standard beta = 22, P < 0.01). Moreover, the race effect on this measure was reduced to
454 nonsignificance when income was controlled (P > 0.10). Gender and race had no effects on the ability of videogame playing to predict creativity. Regression analyses to predict creativity from the six types of videogames indicated that all except racing/driving games predicted all measures of creativity. Racing/driving games did, however, predict two measures of creativity: Elf possibilities and number of words in the Egg story. Thus, regardless of the type of videogame, more videogame playing was associated with greater creativity. Conclusions and Recommendations for Future Research Our findings indicate that children’s videogame playing has a favorable impact on the cognitive outcome, creativity. One question for future research is ‘‘Why?’’ What mediates the relationship between videogame playing and creativity? We mentioned a few suspects earlier in this report, the most promising of which is visual-spatial skills. Does videogame playing increase visual-spatial skills, and do these skills mediate the relationship between videogame playing and creativity, measured in a variety of ways? Another potential positive cognitive outcome of videogame playing that we propose to investigate is computational thinking. There exists in the literature dozens of definitions of what computational thinking is and is not (e.g., a Google search produced 1,510,000 hits). According to Wikipedia, ‘‘Computational Thinking is a new way of solving problems that gets its name because it uses many of the same techniques used by computer science.’’ The term was first used by Seymour Papert.22 It has since achieved prominence due largely to the efforts of Jeannette M. Wing23 at the National Science Foundation and at Carnegie Mellon who stated in her ELI presentation ( January 21, 2010) that in the 21st century Computational thinking will be a fundamental skill used by everyone in the world. To reading, writing, and arithmetic, let’s add computational thinking to every child’s analytical ability. Computational thinking is an approach to solving problems, building systems, and understanding human behavior that draws on the power and limits of computing. Computational thinking requires thinking abstractly and thinking at multiple levels of abstraction. It represents a universally applicable attitude and skill set everyone, not just computer scientists, would be eager to learn and use.23
Does videogame playing or, more precisely, videogame creation increase computational thinking skills? We have already designed several studies to address this question. Author Disclosure Statement No competing financial interests exist. References 1. Gee H. What Videogames Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (revised and updated edition). New York: Palgrave Macmillan; 2007. 2. Lewis JM, Trinh P, Kirsh D. A corpus analysis of strategy video game play in Starcraft: Brood War. In: Carlson L, Ho¨lscher C, Shipley T. eds. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society; 2011; pp 687–692.
JACKSON 3. Entertainment Software Association. 2012. www.theesa .com/ (accessed October 9, 2012). 4. Green CS, Bavelier D. Action video experience alters the spatial resolution of vision. Psychol Sci 2007; 18:88–94. 5. Bavelier GD, Green CS, Pouget A, Schrater P. Brain plasticity through the life span: Learning to learn and action video games. Annu Rev Neurosci 2012; 35:391–416. 6. Hotz RL. When gaming is good for you. Hours of intense play change the adult brain; better multitasking, decisionmaking and even creativity. Wall Street J March 6, 2012. (http://www.rlleaders.com/news/2012-press/when-gamingis-good-for-you/) 7. Green CS, Pouget A, Bavelier D. Improved probabilistic inference as a general learning mechanism with action video games. Curr Biol 2010; 23:1573–1579. 8. Green CS, Bavelier D. The cognitive neuroscience of video games. In: Messaris P, Humphreys L, eds. Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc; 2006; pp 211–220. 9. Green CS, Bavelier D. Effect of action video games on the spatial distribution of visuospatial attention. J Exp Psychol 2006; 32:1465–1468. 10. Spence I, Feng J. Video games and spatial cognition. Rev Gen Psychol 2010; 14:92–104. 11. Dye MWG, Green CS, Bavelier D. The development of attention skills in action video game players. Neuropsychologia 2009: 47:1780–1789. 12. Messaris P, Humphreys L, eds. Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc; 2006. 13. ExcelQuest. STEM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). http://excel-quest.org/Education_ Support.html (accessed October 9, 2011). 14. Subrahmanyam K, Greenfield PM. Effect of video game practice on spatial skills in girls and boys. J Appl Dev Psychol 1994; 15:13–32. 15. Jackson LA, von Eye A, Fitzgerald HE, et al. (2009). Videogame playing, cell phone use and academic performance: Some good news. In: Proceedings of the International Association for the Development of Information Systems: IADIS International Conference e-Society 2009, Barcelona, Spain, February 25–28. Barcelona, Spain: IADIS Digital Library, 2009. www.iadisportal.org/digital-library (accessed November 15, 2009). 16. Jackson LA, Zhao Y, Fitzgerald HE, et al. The impact of information technology (IT) use on children’s cognitive, social, psychological and moral development. In: Morgan K, Brebbia CA, Spector JM, eds. WWW: The Internet Society II: Advances in Education, Commerce and Governance. Southampton, UK: WIT Press; 2006: 23–32. 17. Jackson LA, von Eye A, Biocca FA, et al. Does home Internet use influence the academic performance of low-income children? Findings from the HomeNetToo project. Dev Psychol 2006; 42:429–435. 18. Mueller JS, Melwani S, Goncalo JA. The bias against creativity: Why people desire but reject creative ideas. Psychol Sci 2012; 23:13–17. 19. Tschang, FT. Balancing the tensions between rationalization and creativity in the video games industry. Organization Science 2007; 18:989–1005. 20. Jackson LA, Witt EA, Games A, Fitzgerald HE, von Eye A. Technology use and creativity: Findings from the Children and Technology Project. Comput Hum Behav 2011; 29: 343–350.
THE UPSIDE OF VIDEOGAME PLAYING 21. Torrance EP. Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Bensenville, IL: Scholastic Testing; 1987. 22. Papert S. An exploration in the space of mathematics education. International Journal of Computers for Mathematical Learning 1996; 1:95–123. 23. Wing JM. Viewpoint: Computational thinking. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2006; 49:33–35.
455 Address correspondence to: Linda A. Jackson, PhD Department of Psychology Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824 E-mail: [email protected]
