Some people consider video games a waste of time. Some believe they are nothing more than activities to pass time and accomplish nothing. Of course, gamers will try to retaliate by stating all the good that video games have brought upon our society. A few of the arguments may include increased intelligence and better coordination. They both somewhat have truths behind them, but is not entirely true. There have been hundreds of studies looking for proof of video games helping our mental ability. Unfortunately, most are not strongly reinforced. Some of the ways scientists for cognitive function is problem solving, spatial memory, and abstract reasoning. Although there are some who agree that video games help with these functions, there is simply not a strong enough argument for all of them. One of them however, stands out among the rest. Spatial memory and mental rotation is shown as greatly improved when playing video games as compared to the others. In fact, this is the most proven field when it comes to mental improvement after playing games. This is even stronger reinforced by the fact that there is a strong correlation through large age groups. From young children to university students, mental rotation has been shown time and time again to have improved for those that play games.
First, we look at how video games can help our mental ability in general from all spectrums. Most studies lean towards this view, and studies about the opposite is limited. Elena Novak from Kent State University led a study involving students from a Kentucky university. The purpose of the study was to find the difference between the effects of playing AVG (Action video games), and non AVG. For this study, she used Unreal Tournament 2004 and Angry Birds as an AVG and non-AVG example, respectively. She actually didn’t find much different between the AVG and non-AVG. Instead, she found that both helped mental ability. “In conclusion, our study showed that the Unreal Tournament 2004 and Angry Birds games were effective for improving working memory, mental rotation skills, and geometry performance.” (Novak and Tassell, 128) She then describes these findings as significant because working memory was directly related to higher levels of thinking for children. She notes a possibility of gaming in young children can help them perform better in tests and achieve STEM careers.
There are examples to support her claim that children may perform better in math when they are introduced to video games. In fact, Agne Suziedelyte from Monash University does exactly that. She compared students of age teen and younger that played games with those that didn’t. She also noted the amount of time spent on these games. She was able to find a strong correlation between higher scoring in math tests for students who played games compared to those that didn’t. They also found that there was almost no difference in reading ability, similar to what was shown from Novak’s study. Also similar to Novak’s study, the type of game simply did not matter. She also found an important finding. “In most of the estimated models, the effect of video game playing is found to be comparable to the effect of educational activities, suggesting that some video games may have as much potential to improve children’s problem solving skills as more traditional educational tools.” (Suziedelyte, 1154) This means that games can possibly be as powerful in helping children with math ability as traditional educational activities. With this, it is possible in the future for children to learn math through games at educational institutes. Suziedelyte adds another support to this claim with, “Irrespective of the preferred identification strategy and model specification, video game playing is never found to negatively affect children’s problem solving skills.” (Suziedelyte, 1154) This is significant because although there is some evidence that games may help with problem solving skills, there is no evidence that it hurts it. Because it only helps, it can be a great alternative to teaching math skills.
Of course, the fact that games help with problem solving is not as widely accepted as the fact that it helps with mental rotational skills. Isabelle D. Cherney from Creighton University humorously titled a journal on this topic, “Mom, let me play more computer games: they improve my mental rotation skills”. (Cherney, 776) In fact, Richard De Lisi from Rutgers University and Kara J Blacker from John Hopkins University both wrote very similar papers on this topic. This just shows how much evidence there is in this specific field. Of course, their papers were not exactly the same and focused on different aspects. Blacker’s paper focused on visual short-term memory, which is related to mental rotation, but not exactly the same thing. Cherney and Lisi’s papers were very similar, except for a single difference related to gender.
To understand how video games effect mental rotation, a better understanding of what mental rotation is, is needed. In a nutshell, it is how well a person may imagine a 3D object in their mind and rotate it in their head. By doing this, they can imagine what’s in the back and understand how it would look if it was to be rotated into any direction. A simple way to test this would be to have a multiple choice test. An image is given, and people have to select which of the given images are the same shape as the image that is given, simply in a rotated state. Someone with a high rotational mental ability would have ease with this question as compared to someone who doesn’t. This test is many times also quantified as a measure of intelligence as it appears several times during IQ tests. Of course this is only just a small mental exercise that is not representative of a person’s intellect as a whole at all. De Lisi puts this in more formal terms. “MENTAL ROTATION (MR) is a type of spatial ability in which a person imagines how a two- or three-dimensional object or array would appear after it has been turned around a specified axis a given number of degrees.” (De Lisi and Wolford, 272) Of course this is related to other mental activities such as memorizing the 3D object, which is the primary subject of Blacker’s paper. It is interesting to note that with all these studies that are created to look for a different result, all return mostly the same thing. De Lisi was more focused on the fact that video games helped with mental rotation while Cherney focused more on more effective ways to deliver games and which groups it effects the most. Basically, Cherney’s research builds on the fact that De Lisi’s findings proved true. This is why much of Cherney’s paper is very similar to De Lisi’s. In fact, they use the same game as a reference when it comes to a person’s previous game expertise, which is experience with the game Tetris. Tetris is such a basic game related to shapes and understanding of it that players with Tetris experience performed significantly better on these mental tests than those who didn’t. Both Cherney and De Lisi acknowledged this in their papers. It was interesting that not all of their findings were the same.
The biggest difference came to what they found in gender. De Lisi lists that “individual differences in the third-grade children’s two-dimensional MR accuracy were observed on the card rotation task designed for this investigation. Although there were some boys with low levels of MR performance and some girls with high levels, a significant gender difference favoring boys over girls was evident.” (De Lisi and Wolford, 280) This contrasts directly with Cherney’s finding that “Practice with computer games improved both men’s and women’s performance, but women’s gains were significantly greater than men’s.” (Cherney, 783) Both studies were seemingly conducted properly, yet different results are shown. This may simply be due to the fact that their samples were different, which led to inaccurate results. However, the large size of both studies suggests otherwise. Another explanation is simply the changing times. Video games are a very quick moving industry with significant differences in the industry in a short amount of time. We also know that the video game population shifted from a male majority to a more equal distribution. Because De Lisi’s paper was written in 2002 while Cherney’s paper was written in 2008, we can list time as being a possible explanation on the difference in gender performance to these tests. However, the fact that their general result that video games help significantly with mental rotation has stayed consistently throughout history. In fact, Cherney’s paper shows that even a small amount of video games (just over 4 hours) can have a significant effect in improving our mental rotation ability. Because so much of our cognitive function is linked to this ability, the ability help a certain portion with just a few hours of gaming is significant. In fact, there was not a significant difference between those who played a lot and those who played a little for a majority of these studies. Blacker’s paper follows the similar theme as these other two, but showing that our visual short term memory is also improved, just at a lesser rate than our mental rotation skill. In her words, “rom the present results, exposure to these visual environments over an extensive period of time appears to enhance this capacity-limited VSTM system.” (Blacker and Curby, 1134)
Although we found powerful evidence that a few hours of video games help with mental rotation, it is not a perfect indicator of our other mental abilities and even our physical cognition. David Moreau and his team from the University of Auckland studied the relationship between sports abilities and mental skill, namely mental rotation and spatial recognition. This is relevant both because sports athletes function very similarly to gamers and because it has to do with the relationship between the two areas of cognition. The journal does mention how video games are related to this topic because of that similarity. Their findings showed that sports athletes have a high scores in the MRT (Mental Rotation Test). They also tend to have superior spatial recognition. There are several theories he comes up with to explain this, one of which is that sports athletes require these skills in order to be proficient athletes, not that they have gained this skill from becoming athletes. However, he also shows that spatial ability does not strongly correlate with MRT. This shows that these are merely two skills gamers and athletes have. This study also provided evidence that mental rotation does not have to do with storage of information. This means that he found that mental rotation and memory are not strongly related. This is why it is dangerous to say that video games can help our mental ability because they have been shown to help with mental rotation and spatial ability, but does nothing to help our memory. As a final note, Moreau reported that “Athletes might show a completely original pattern of results in the MRT and more generally in mental rotation ability. Although they might not apply in a more general frame of study, the findings presented in this paper are important to understand which processes do and do not benefit from motor expertise in particular activities.” (Moreau, 178) This means that athletes have superior spatial ability, but it does not come from being skilled at a sport. This means that those with superior spatial abilities were the ones that became athletes. This can be related to gamers as well.
We’ve seen the different ways that video games can affect our mental ability and skill. Namely, it’s the rotational memory and spatial memory that stands out among the rest. There is also some evidence suggesting that it also helps with our problem solving skills. However, there’s not much supporting the claims that games help with memory, which is a significant portion of what our brain does. Even still, with this we know that games have a positive effect overall when it comes to training our mind. It was important that we revealed that only short amounts of gaming can help improve our mental ability, and that the type of game has very little to do with it. Although there is some arguments on how it helps women versus men, but is no doubt that it can have a great impact on children. With these studies shown, it is clear that introducing a small amount of any video game to children can only help them. Schools need to be looking into bringing video games into the classrooms at an early age in order to help them develop certain mental abilities.
Works Cited
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.libproxy2.usc.edu/doi/10.1111/ecin.12197/full
http://www.sciencedirect.com.libproxy2.usc.edu/science/article/pii/S0747563215300121
Digg & Dagg 