PSY 230: Non-associative learning
What does it mean to learning and not be aware of it? Can you learn without a mind? How can simple exposure and experience create memories and learning? Does doing something repeatedly effect changes in the brain? What is the significance of all of this happening outside of the conscious awareness of an organism—especially human beings?
Your blog entry is due Wednesday at 11:59pm.
For this entry, I want you to read Green and Bavelier’s (2003) study of the effects of (action) video games on attention, which you have hopefully already downloaded. Is it true that video games are all bad?!
In addition, make sure you download Maguire, Frackowiak, and Frith’s (1997) study of the spatial memory of cab drivers and Pyszczynski, Wicklund, Floresku, Koch, Gauch, Solomon, and Greenberg’s (1996) examination of the nonconscious effects of ‘death’, which will be discussed in class soon.
Also, be looking ahead toward the chapters on classical and operant conditioning.
Finally, make sure to be thinking about your paper for the course. The paper and references need to be approved by me, so it’s a good idea to come speak with me in person or exchange emails. I will do the literature review for you, to help give you the best readings to support your paper idea!
As always, I am looking forward to the discussion and hearing your thoughts about video games and attention. Post away!
-Christy Lane (TA), PSY-230
First, I’ll review Green and Baveller (2003), and after this, I’ll go into my opinion (rant) about video games, and the effect they can have on people. Their entire experiment was based off of the idea that exposing one to an altered visual environment results in modification of their visual system. The authors wanted to find out if action video game playing is capable of altering a range of visual skills. I’d like to focus on their 5th experiment, which dealt with training non-video game players on an action video game, and comparing the player’s capacity for visual attention before and after game playing.
First of all, I’d like to take note of the game they chose: ‘Medal of Honor’. ‘Medal of Honor’, for those that don’t know, is a WWII war-based shooter. It is fairly complex, as far as games are concerned (many different button combinations, strategy, etc), and it is far more complex than the control game, ‘Tetris’. I’d find it hard to believe that a non-gamer would have an easy time adjusting, going from not playing any games to playing a game as complex as ‘Medal of Honor’. Although Green and Baveller (2003) don’t mention it in their paper, I’d be interested to know about the learning curve these participants saw. Imagine your parents just picking up an action video game after barely playing anything else. That would be strange. Well, with the invention of the Nintendo Wii (how I loathe it), I guess this idea is becoming less strange every day.
Anyway, the main point of the results is that these non-video game players, after training on ‘Medal of Honor’ for an hour a day, showed marked improvement on their capacity for visual attention when compared to their pre-video game playing scores. This finding seemed significant, as it was universal throughout this experiment. Improvement in visual attention is no laughing matter. Imagine what we would be like with absolutely no visual attention? Not that fun.
Well, this brings me to the question of whether video games have good qualities or not. Some history: my first video game system was a regular Nintendo, that I got when I was 5. The first games I ever played all involved Sesame Street, and they ruled. I truly believe that these video games contributed to my understanding of language, and ability to read. At the age of 9 or so, I started playing more complex games, with more difficult to read text. Enter, of course, the Pokemon craze. I played those games quite a bit, and a lot of reading, cognition, decision making, and the like were involved. I truly believe that playing these games and other role-playing games contributed to where I stand today (or, at least, playing didn’t hurt me THAT much). So, do I think that video games have good qualities to them? My answer is a hesitant ‘yes’, though I become more and more hesitant every day.
Just like anything in life, there is such a thing as too much gaming. With the invent of online gaming, we see people spend far too much time playing against friends, neglecting other aspects of life. Can games improve your visual attention, even further reading skills? Sure. However, the games like this are going farther by the wayside every day. With the right games (not ridiculously violent, etc), we could see marked improvement in many facets of life. In fact, with games such as ‘Brain Age’, we’re seeing some games specifically made to tease our brains. What I would like to see is some sort of research done on these games that are specifically made for learning. Do they work just as well as private lessons? Do they help, on top of a solid foundation of learning? My guess would be the latter.
Overall, Green and Baveller (2003) shows us a few points that we’ve been talking about recently. First, doing something repeatedly can effect changes in the brain. We see this with changes in visual attention. Secondly, we see the effects that stages of expertise can have on the brain. Truly, these non-gamers were novices when they started playing. As they continued to practice, their level of expertise increased, and some important brain structures and abilities changed. Is there a direct correlation? One would think that there is.
Importantly as well, subjects also showed learning without ‘trying’ to learn, that is, in playing games, they learned how to gain better visual attention without trying to at all. Thus, we can see that simple exposure to repeated stimuli can have an effect (good or bad) on learning, and the memories we store. Learning something outside of our consciousness shows that we as humans learn far more than we ever think we do, every day. We’re always improving certain facets of our mind, picking up pieces of information, and honing our skills, many times without even realizing it. One would then imagine that things that are learned consciously would differ drastically from those learned unconsciously, but I suppose this is another subject.
Spenser Brossman, PSY 230.
As a rather uncoordinated gamer that prefers watching my roommates play video games rather than participating, I have to agree with you that Medal of Honor is a very complex game, and I cannot imagine an inexperienced gamer like myself picking it up even after playing an hour a day for ten days. However, it seems rather impressive that even learning to become even moderately efficient at such a complex game would help visual attention so greatly.
It would definitely be interesting to see more research on what kinds of games improve upon specific skills, and also what kind of deficits, such as social ones, they have. The Wii opens up a whole world of questions for me. I often wonder whether it really has the kind of physical benefits for the elderly and wii fit users as seems to be reported, or if it simply encourages people to have an easier and more immediate means rather than going out and really exercising.
Allison Parker, Psy 230
Great point! I would be very interested to see the studies that have been done using the Wii since it does seem to have so much more physical action involved. In reference to the article we read about people watching hockey’s ability correlation in comprehension I wonder if the same would be true of say a Wii bowler and a regular league bowler?
Lindsay Haston
PSY 230
Green and Baveller (2003) explored the effects of habitual action video gaming different aspects of visual attention. They tested video gamers against non gamers on assessments of attentional resources, enumeration, useful field of view, and attentional blink. They then trained a group on action video game and administered post-testing on that group as well as a control group trained in a more simple game (tetris).
I found all of the tests used to be very interesting and brought to my attention all of the many aspects involved in visual attention. By testing the effect distractors had on tasks of varying difficulty, researchers could see that video gamers had more “spill over” attentional resources to attend to the distractors even when completing difficult tasks. They were also able to identify larger groups of shapes when flashed rapidly (without enough time to numerically count them, but simply quickly identify how many were shown), attend to a larger field of view, and identify targets presented rapidly in succession of one another (this displayed a decrease in blinking as well as an increased ability to alternate between types of tasks, i.e. naming the target and then simply detecting the next target).
After training, the group trained in action video games improved on all of these visual tests. This controlled for other variables, such as a preexisting increased attentional ability or an increased visuo-motor ability. It also displayed the increased benefits of multi-faceted action games specifically, different from simpler games such as tetris.
This article truly displayed the human brain’s ability to learn in an unconscious manner. Much like learning a motor skill, these players were able to draw from their visual experience without actually drawing upon any episodic or semantic memories. In other words, they gained visual attentional skills from a video game without knowing that they’d learned those skills from the game. Exposure to a an environment that has more visual information than our everyday displays our ability to adapt to different environments. This seems to have evolutionary implications, as we will unconsciously adapt to “survive” (I’m not necessarily referring to surviving your virtual life, but rather our ability to quickly adapt to surroundings). This displays a more primitive, mindless form of learning. Here, our brains display plasticity without any involvement of the “mind”. In fact, video games are often described as a mindless activity. However, although my argument would support that notion, it seems as though they are not altogether useless when it comes to learning and can have some benefits.
Allison Parker, Psy 230
Green and Bavelier (2003) look at the potential risks to perceptual and motor skills among those who play video games. Five experiments were conducted to measure various skills.
The first experiment measured attentional resources. The flanker compatibility test was used to test whether attention skills were affected. As the target task became more difficult, the “left over attentional resources” were not as readily available. This experiment shows that the more difficult the target task, the less attention the participant paid to the distracter. The second experiment measured enumeration performance. The subjects were asked to recall how many images they saw after it was displayed. This showed that the participants who played video games could remember more items displayed in comparison to the group who did not play video games. The third experiment measured attention over space by comparing the distribution of visual attention. Those who played video games outperformed those who did not. The fourth experiment measures attention over time. The point of this experiment was to see if the anxiety to act quickly had any effect on processing items over time. This experiment showed that those who played video games had increased ability to process information over time as opposed to those who did not play video games. The last experiment measured performance before and after training. Each group was tested on enumeration, useful-field-of-view and attentional blink experiments. This experiment showed that training individuals on action video games improved their performance. (Green and Bavelier, 2003)
Overall, learning occurs without consciously being aware of it. Each experiment showed that the participants who played the video games improved their performance. Through our experiences we are learning whether we are aware of it or not. Doing something repeatedly makes us learn something without having to consciously think about it. Learning how to drive and being an experienced driver is a good example of this that we talked about in class. If we thought about our every move while driving, our risk of getting into an accident increases. We are not consciously thinking about this because we are skilled drivers.
Caitlin Deussing
PSY 230
I agree that learning would become very complicated if our thoughts were used to actually learn this task, and learning how to drive is a great example of this. We as human beings learn without consciously having to think about it, and this allows us to become experts who can complete the task without the use of thoughts.
Ana Prelic, PSY 230
Caitlin, you state that “overall, learning occurs without consciously being aware of it.” And both of you cite driving as an example of this. I’ll grant you that, as we discussed in class and on the last blog, the skill of driving is unconscious once you become an expert. However, are there aspects of learning that are conscious? Or, maybe, are there types of learning that are conscious in contrast to the type of learning presented by Green and Bavelier (2003)?
-Christy Lane (TA), PSY-230
Green and Baveller (2003) built their studies around the concept that alternate visual environments can entirely shift an individual’s visual system. To demonstrate this conditioning, Green and Baveller conducted five experiments with avid video game players aged 18 to 23 and non video game players within the same age bracket. The experiments measured enumeration, field of view, attentional blink and attentional resources. Afterwards two groups were trained on video games of entirely different genres and type of visual acuity, one on Tetris and another on Medal of Honor. An important distinction was made between the visual skills involved for games like Medal of Honor versus that of a simple, singular focus game such as Tetris.
The impact of non-associative learning is tremendous. For skills like driving, walking and speaking it is important that much of the learning become unconscious, allowing for a much smoother flow. I truly shows how very complex the body and mind are that we are able to absorb and retain new material through practice without knowledge. In addition the transition from novice to at least proficient can be attained with mere training like the control group underwent playing an hour of games a day for ten days. If looking at this study alone it seems obvious that video games are not all bad. While I will concede to the fact that there are some visual system benefits to playing video games, there is still tremendous evidence that staring at any type of screen for extended periods of time is detrimental both cognitively and on the eyes themselves.
I also found it interesting that only males were studied for the first four experiments. Although there are certainly a greater number of avid gamers that are male, there are certainly some women. Perhaps a gender difference could play some role? In addition, the age of the subjects. Perhaps results would differ if younger kids were studied?
Lindsay Haston
PSY 230
I had the same thought about the age of the participants in this study- it was very limited. You mention younger kids, but I also wonder what you would see if you trained older adults who did not grow up in a world of technology.
-Christy Lane (TA), PSY-230
I also questioned their choice of using only males except for in the last experiment. At one time, Ibelieve, gaming was done by more males than females; however, I do not think that stands true anymore. I don’t know specific statitstic but it has definitely evolved into a hobby that is popular among both males and females. I feel this was definitely a limitation within this study.
ShawnMarie Reilly, PSY 230
Green and Bavelier (2003) explored the vast ways that video game playing affects perceptual learning and motor skills. Perceptual learning involves training-induced performance. The visual system of an organism changes as an organism is exposed to altered visual environments. Video game playing has been shown to alter the range of visual skills. The article supported this hypothesis by conducting five experiments which examined both video game players (VGP) and non-video game players (NVGP) and how visual attention and pre-training abilities compared between the two. The first experiment measured to-be-ignored distractor effects on a target task. As the target increases in difficulty, there are fewer attentional resources to process the distractor. The second experiment used an enumeration task to ask participants to report the number of squares which flashed briefly on a display. These two experiments found that attentional capacity was enhanced through video game playing in the training range. The next experiment explored visual processing at untrained locations and found that the locating of spatial attention over a visual field was enhanced, at both trained and untrained locations. The fourth experiment studied whether the requirement of acting fast in action video games would alter the processing of items over time. It found that video game players are able to better process information over time. The last experiment exposed NVGPs to playing one hour of an action video game for 10 days to rule out confounds of the study. Green and Bavelier (2003) found that “10 days of training on an action game is sufficient to increase the capacity of visual attention, its spatial distribution and its temporal resolution” (p. 3).
Video gamers spend a sufficient amount of time molded to a couch in front of a television which holds action content which the video gamer himself controls. These games have become so intricate and elaborate that it takes thousands of pages of instructions to simply beat the game. The repeated exposure to these video games allows the gamers to become better at visually processing and paying attention to multiple items at one time. This article used 5 experiments which proved exactly this statement. So, by simply being exposed to these games and experiencing them, the gamers create new memories and learn in order to apply the plethora of knowledge needed to defeat the game or achieve a certain goal within the game. Everything Bad Is Good For You, an interesting book by Steven Johnson, argues that video games (and other popular media) create more intelligent beings which are able to better process, retain, and evaluate newly presented information. This book then supports the aims of this article in emphasizing the important role video games play in perceptual learning and motor skills.
So, are video games actually bad or good? This question is rather subjective, but with more and more research being conducted on this topic, most answers lead to a yes. When considering the argument made by the article and its experiments which proved that video games do in fact increase visual capacity and processing, it seems very plausible to say that video games are beneficial, for increasing these perceptual skills. The article mentioned, however, that no other skill learning benefits of video games have been identified as of now. Because of this, there is a possibility that the other effects of video games such as decreased physical fitness, social interaction, changes in brain development, and etc., could harm the gamer more than the benefits he or she would receive in terms of visual processing and capacity. This, as of now, cannot be confirmed, and we should be hopeful in believing that video games have many more beneficial aspects to it, considering how many millions of people devote their time to sitting in front of a television to play these games.
In class, we discussed the computational mind and how it is truth-preserving; the world will not change because you are thinking about it. Would video gamers be affected in the way think about the real world because of the other worlds they experience in video games like Grand Theft Auto, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, or Halo? It might be that the way that gamers perceive the world could be affected by how deeply involved they are in the game. A scary movie creates effects on people which haunt them for days or weeks after having watched it, so could the same be said of video games? As well as that, we talked of intelligence and skill learning without mental representation. This can be carried over when discussing video games. These gamers follow the trend from novice to expert without using mental representations to gain this expert status. This is fascinating.
Green and Bavelier (2003) made strong and good arguments for the benefits of video games in regards to perceptual learning and visual processing and capacity. This research is extremely pertinent in our time due to the vast number of people who engage in these video game activities.
Ana Prelic, PSY 230
It sounds like you’re referring to the Dreyfus (2002) paper when you talk about mental representations toward the end of your post (and great job tying these together). So do you agree that you can learn without a mind?
-Christy Lane (TA), PSY-230
I don’t know enough information to fully be convinced that this is so. From what I have gathered from our readings and my own experiences, I do think that we learn without a mind. That isn’t to say that we do not evaluate and process the things that we are learning, but I do believe that some things that we learn and master, we do automatically.
Ana Prelic, PSY 230
Though many parents might disagree, there is obviously a hidden bonus to playing video games. It is clear that when playing an action oriented video game, the intention is not to increase “visual attention.” However, it is clear that by playing a fast past action-oriented game one gains better “visual attention” as well as “spatial distribution” (see p. 534). Green and Bavelier (2003) shows that video game players are in a sense learning and improving pre-existing game skills without knowing it. Therefore, it seems the case that people are able to learn without being aware of it. Furthermore, it seems that by simply doing a seemingly ordinary activity like playing video games one is able to in a sense change the brain and how it functions.
I was a little skeptical at first when reading this paper because there seemed to be many confounds. However, the authors addressed these confounds with an additional experiment. The biggest concern I had was that maybe those who excelled at video games might have better skills however, as the authors addressed anyone who continues to play action-oriented games can improve the same skills (see p. 536), . It seems that these results are not only significant, but the authors clearly proved that they are accurate as well.
It seems strange that playing video games could alter functions as it does, however it is not the only activity that can cause enhanced functioning. Many people argue that becoming an expert at various activities can cause an increase in functions associated within a particular field. For example, expert musicians show enhancements in many functions that non musicians do not show. This study is important for many reasons. The first is that it proves that people can learn and further skill without even trying or being aware of it. Second of all it shows that people can improve functions that seem to stay unchanged in other individuals. This idea seems very useful. If one could figure out which activities could improve certain skills they could use it to help individuals who are delayed in certain areas.
Lindsay Conn, PSY 230
Lindsay,
The last sentence of your thoughts popped out at me! You would think that video games would be manipulated to facilitate mental growth in delayed processes, but it seems to me that most games arent designed for that purpose. More commonly, I remember games from my childhood similar to today’s “Baby Einstein” technologies designed solely for developing children, games invented for this purpose should be more widely produced for teenagers and adults as well!
Adia C
Psy 230
In Chapter 4 of the text, Skill Memory, it discusses the concept of implicit memory. This is where “individuals can learn to perform certain skills without ever being aware that learning has occurred” (Gluck, Mercado, & Myers, p. 136, 2008). As a result the individual now has the ability to perform a new skill without necessarily utilizing their mind. In this instance, exposure and repeated experience with the new skill is the sole factor in the acquisition of the skill.
In regards to Green & Bavelier’s 2003 study on action-video games, the purpose was to show how those with repeated exposure, video game players (VPGs) altered their capacity for visual attentional capacities and a decrease in responding to distractors. Through this discussion it was found that video games can alter a response in the brain; this response being visual selective attention. I found the article at first hard to read, but after re-reading a second time I came to the understanding that it did represent the concept of repeated exposure causing changes in the brain. “It is well known that exposing an organism to an altered visual environment often results in modification of the visual system of the organism.” This statement alone suggests that changes in the brain occurring as a result of exposure; in that through playing the game you utilize your visual skills, and therefore alter them in return.
According to the Green and Bavelier, action video games are “capable of radically altering visual attentional processing”. In that the players of the action video games were able to build upon their abilities to switch tasks rapidly as well as blink less, in a sense. These results were not shown however, in the control game of Tetris. As an avid Tetris player, I found using the game as a control to be correct, yet the action video game of choice seemed to be a bit too complex. Tetris is a simple game that does draw focus on each individual object, and how it “fits” with the whole, as the paper eluded. Yet, because of how simple the game is, attentional blink and task-switching abilities were not likely to be introduced.
The paper showed these results through the flanker compatibility effect. The results of this task showed that VGPs, who have been exposed to the action game’s over time, now are less distracted by distractors and well as show a decrease in the speed in which they exhaust their visual attention resources. This eludes that they have acquired an enhanced capacity for attention, whereas their NVGPs counterparts have not.
Danielle Pierre
Psy 230
In reference to implicit memory, there are skills that you learn that are outside of your conscious awareness (and great job tying in your readings from the textbook). Does that mean that you don’t need a mind for these processes? Or can you see a place for the mind in this?
-Christy Lane (TA), PSY-230
Christy,
Just to take a stab at that very dense question… I remember watching a film which presented a neurosurgeon operating on a patient awake. As I’m sure you predict where I’m going with this, the surgeon would stimulate an area of the brain and the patient phenomenally begin to speak Spanish, a language that she claimed to have never learned or have never been acclimated to via childhood environment because she and her family were of a Non-Latino background. This suggests that implicit memory is “stored” until retrieved, though she did not do this on her own does this suggest unconsciously there is information that will NEVER become explicit even with an exhausted list of hints and cues of retrieval?
Adia C
Psy 230
In response to your question Christy. I feel as though that in this case, the “mind” is not necessarily utilized to learn a skill unconsciously. Often times skills are acquired based merely on replicating what you’ve seen. For example, opening a door. One can’t recall the day they were taught how to open a door. It wasn’t something that my mom&dad sat me down to explain as they did for how to tie my shoes. In this instance the learning was unconscious. Hence, I do not use my “mind” to decide when, what movements, and then purpose myself to use these when faced with a closed door.
Danielle Pierre
Psy 230
The study carried out by Green and Bavelier (2003) was driven by their want to find out whether video games have an effect on perceptual and motor skills. They show that playing video games has the ability to alter an assortment of visual skills.
To do this they carried out five experiments using video-game players (VGP) and non-video-game players (NVGP) with participants between the ages of 18 and 23. All of the experiments except five involved only male participants. Video-game players were defined at those who played four days a week for at least one hour for at least the last six months. Non-video-game players were preferred to have not played for six months.
In the first four experiments, their focus was attentional resources, enumeration, useful field of view, and attentional blink. All four of these experiments involved video-game players and non-video-game players. The last experiment involved all non-video-game players, both male and female. This was a training experiment used to rule out possible confounds that arose during experiments 1-4. The control group played Tetris (demands focus on one object at a time) and the other group played Medal of Honor (action-game). They played the games for 10 straight days for one hour. The groups were tested on enumeration, useful field of view, and attentional blink before and after their training. All trainees’ scores enhanced throughout the 10 days; however, Medal of Honor (action-game) players improved in enumeration, useful field of view, and attentional blink while the others (Tetris trainees’) didn’t. These experiments confirmed that although video-game playing seems to be rather mindless, it is capable of radically altering visual attentional processing (Green and Bavelier, 2003, p. 536).
Although I am the farthest from a video-game player I found these experiments very interesting. It also slightly changed my outlook on video-games a little bit. Like many I always believed nothing really came out of playing video-games besides possible “brain rot.” The last two articles we read had much to do with non-conscious learning and memory. It is amazing to me that I can try so hard to learn and remember certain things (i.e. class materials) and it can feel almost impossible; however, I became an expert at both driving and serving and now put no conscious thought into these processes.
ShawnMarie Reilly, PSY 230
You bring up an interesting point of difficulty in memorization and how it affects skill level. One can think of learning class materials by reading and writing them down over and over so they can memorized more easily. Since memorizing class material does not usually involve someone else unless you’re reviewing material with a partner, it is much more easier to get distracted because there is no one else to remind you to keep the going on. However, when driving, interaction with other drivers and obstacles is much more common, therefore you are making constant adjustments which effects and most likely improves the driving or serving to the point where you can do it without consciously thinking about it.
Edward Baransky PSY 230 TR 8AM
To learn and to not be aware of it means that you are training your body to get better at something but not on purpose and it is a side effect of performing some other action repeatedly. For example, in the Green and Bavelier article, they show that people who play video games have better visual attention skills. I am pretty sure that those people did not start to play video games because they had visual attention problems. However, due to prolonged playing, their visual attention skills are significantly higher than those who reported that they do not play video games on a regular basis.
One can learn without a mind but it is mostly autonomic responses. Reflexes are a good example because if you had to wait for your mind to process a situation and then respond, you could seriously hurt yourself. For example, the natural reflex to touching a pot on a stove, that has been on, is to immediately retract your hand. If you waited for your brain to process what is happening, then you would probably burn yourself pretty badly.
The article shows that simple exposure and experience creates memories and learning in the experiment. They had a group of non-gamer participants play an hour of video games, medal of honor (an action shooter), and a group of non-gamer participants play tetris as a control. Green and Bavelier chose tetris due to the fact that to play the participant only has to concentrate on one piece at a time. After ten days of playing, the spatial attention increased and was better than the participants that played tetris. Simple acts such as playing video games can increase learning of spatial activities. There are other examples much like this one, such as surgeons playing video games to help their dexterity. The quick movement of their hands, that is required when playing complex video games, and thus increases their hand skills.
Once again, I am going to use basketball as an example to show how doing something repeatedly effect changes in the brain. When I first started playing, I had to dribble looking down frequently. I practiced with dribbling drills and after playing for over 10 years, I can walk to class and dribble without thinking twice about it. Also, the study shows that video games can affect changes in the brain. The more an activity is performed the more the brain adapts. This is how we enhance skills that we do not have to think about, such as reflexes or visual spatial attention. For example, when someone first takes a typing course or uses a typing tutor they cannot type many words per minute. However, after years of doing it, people can type and successfully do other things, like holding a conversation without even looking at what they are typing.
Antonio Vetrano PSY 230 8am TR
You bring up reflexes in your post and note that they, too, are non-conscious. Are reflexes a type of learned behavior then or are they something different? That is, do you develop reflexes in a similar way as you learn other non-conscious things?
-Christy Lane (TA), PSY-230
From what I can gather, reflexes are definitely not a learned behavior. In fact, I don’t think you can even “develop” reflexes. A reflex is an involuntary, instantaneous reaction to a stimulus. Examples of this include the grasp and rooting reflexes in children. These responses are innate and adaptive.
Erum Zaidi, PSY 230
It’s ironic that this reading was assigned the same day that the new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 game came out. I should know because many of my friends and I are concerned since we haven’t seen our boyfriends in over 24 hours. Although Green and Bavelier (2003) recognized that video games help improve visual skills as well as spatial skills, I can say that it is doing nothing for my boyfriend’s hearing.
Green and Bavelier had college students play video games for a minimum of 1 hour each day for at least 4 days a week for 6 months. After this duration, the students’ visual skills were tested. Students who were trained playing action video games had better visual skills and visual attention than students with little or no video game playing experience. Those VGPs tracked objects better, reacted faster and located visual targets better than NVGPs. In another experiment, visual skills of students who played 10 hours of the action game Medal of Honor were compared to those of students who played 10 hours of Tetris, which of course is much less challenging. Those students who played action video games scored much better on all tests of visual skills than the non-action video game players.
The researchers believe that action video games force player to perform mutilple tasks causing them to utilize parts of the brain more often than others. It is possible that action video games could be used as a form of alternative treatment for those with visual problems. Not necessarily video games, but virtual reality (VR) has been used as alternative therapies and means of researching driving habits, for instance, which type of cell phone is better for texting while driving, the iPhone or a cell phone with buttons? This would normally be an extremely dangerous issue to research, but VR has made that possible.
I think its really exciting that video games are opening up new means of research and that their findings are not very difficult to understand. You see an object pop up on the screen multiple times, as soon as another object pops up, the action becomes second nature. Skill acquisition can occur without someone necessarily knowing, but there comes a time when skill recognition can become dull and sensitized due to over exposure, but this is not explored.
Monica Singh
PSY 230
The significant finding in Green and Bavelier (2003) purports that regular video game players not only have a greater attentional capacity, but also increased target processing. While at first it could be thought that video game players are individuals who already possess greater attentional capacities who therefore play video games more successfully. The researchers took this into consideration, however and tested this theory by having non-video game players play action (Medal of Honor, Halo, etc) and non-action games (Tetris, aka my personal favorite). After ten days of playing video games for one hour a day, those who played action games had significantly increased their attentional and target processing capabilities (Green & Bavellar, 2003).
Similarly, in Maguire, Frackowiak, and Frith’s (1997) study of experienced London taxi drivers, when asked to recall complex routes, the same brain region activated during a simple baseline task was used. In Pyszczynski, Wicklund, Floresku, Koch, Gauch, Solomon, and Greenberg’s (1996), study of terror theory, random participants reported increased support for people who share their own beliefs when reminded of their own mortality, by being interviewed in front of a funeral home (though important to note, these results were not replicated by the researchers in the United States).
These studies significantly emphasize the importance of our ability to learn and respond according to our surroundings, even when we are unaware that we are doing so. The habits and activities we engage in daily, the regular routines we follow, and our surroundings all have a very powerful influence on our cognitive abilities and mental processes. These studies also raise many questions: are the attentional capabilities of all people influenced significantly by their habits and routines? Could specific tasks (like video game playing) improve capabilities for patients with attention disorders? Does where one lives, even the buildings surrounding one’s home or work environment, affect one’s outlook and perception of the world? While these experiments conducted in the aforementioned studies are all small-scale examples, they have much larger implications for society, culture, and learning.
Chelsea Biemiller
PSY 230
Green and Bavelier’s (2003) study on the effects of action video games showed that there is such a thing as mindless learning. They studied video gamers and non-video gamers to find if perceptual and motor skills were negatively influenced by video games. Their experiments showed that contrary to popular belief, video games are not all bad and will not, as many mothers grumble “rot your brain.”
The five experiment conducted measured enumeration, field of view, attentional blink and attentional resources. Results showed that video game players gained visual attentional skills from a video game without knowing that they’d learned those skills from the game. This is evidence that we can learn things unconsciously through experience. Performing certain actions repeatedly causes the process to become ingrained in the brain. A first time video game player will have to think about what they are doing when they play, but as they continue to go through the motions, they will become more adept at playing without thinking. The skills have been unconsciously acquired. As we discussed in class, this can be seen in things we do everyday such as driving. Eventually we do not think about the steps and we can skillfully perform the action because we have done it so much that it has become less of a process and more of a mindless sequence of actions. If we were constantly thinking about each step as we performed it, we would not be skilled drivers because there is too much to pay attention to.
All of this happening outside of the conscious awareness is important to human evolution. It is an important survival skill that we can learn things unconsciously through experience. This is not to say that our livelihood depends on video games, but it has been said that people are not as naturally intelligent as we used to be because of technology. The results of this study show that people still have innate abilities that early man possessed and have applied them to modern technology.
Madalyn Dolan PSY 230
Learning is a complicated process; learning without awareness is perhaps more common than one thinks. For example, how many times can a person recall something without knowing where they learned that information? Or perhaps when a student is daydreaming in class, he/she may still be able to recall a majority of the lecture. Doing something repeatedly may not change activity in the brain, but it may create more neural connections, making it possible for one to perform the activity without much awareness. Neurons, when fired for an extended period of time, can fire more easily if stimulated. wFor example, driving is something that most people are very focused on when they first learn to drive; over time, driving becomes somewhat of a passive process rather than active. This may mean that the process of learning may be innate- babies are born with a natural ability to learn, and adapt quite quickly to their environment.
I do not believe that video games are bad; Green and Bavelier (2003) show that video games do increase attentional capacity in the training zone, and may also have an effect outside of the training zone. Video games, if violent, may have a counter-intuitive effect.
Mina Ramchand, PSY 230
It is possible to learn without a mind in that there is no need for conscious awareness of the learning. Learning without being consciously aware of the learning taking place is crucial for survival. Being able to pick up on sensory information and unconsciously notice and act on patterns is a part of everyday life. This type of unconscious processing allows for certain skills to be developed or enhanced. Green and Bavelier (2003) found the video game players had stronger visual attention skills than their non-video game playing peers. Furthermore, non-video game playing individuals were able to increase their visual attention abilities with practice. Importantly, the individual is not conscious of the improvements in such skills. This supports the idea that repeated exposure of a sensory stimulus over time will unconsciously develop into memories and learning which can become expressed as skills or improvements in skills.
Melissa Kruszewski PSY 260
Green and Bavelier (2003) showed in there study that the playing of action video games can alter one’s visual perception. By testing those both novice to video games and familiar, they found that altered perception can be induced through playing. That being said, I do not believe video games are in fact bad. What we have here is an alteration that could in many cases help. Studies have shown those who play video games have increased hand eye coordination, which is another plus.
As cliché as it sounds, when learning is fun, or even just mundane, one can not even realize they’ve learned. We see this with children picking up on a parents or even peers actions, and we see it here with Green and Bavelier’s study. When one has to constantly alter their perception of things. They begin to learn how to naturally see things in that way.
Anwar Patterson
psy 230
The notion that video-game playing is bad or counterproductive to learning is false because studies have shown several positive attributes associated with it. One such study by Green and Bavelier (2003) demonstrates that video-game playing can alter the visual attention in the gamer. The researchers showed that video-game players had greater attentional span than non-video game players and also a greater reduction in attentional blink. Green and Bavelier (2003) demonstrated these differences on increasing levels of difficulty ranging from tetris to the video game, Medal of Honor. Aside from the social stigma attached to violent video games, games that are complex in their tasks and played often are beneficial because of the increase in attentiveness to the task at hand as well as the ability to adapt more quickly in problem solving. For example, in the game Grand Theft Auto, one must complete a mission by adapting to the urban environment. As a fan of the game, I was very hesitant at first to try any risky moves while completing the mission such as carjacking police officers in order to complete the missions faster and obtain more weapons. This was due to me having to go back and forth between looking at the screen and my keyboard. However, after several weeks of play with at least 1 hour of play a day, I was able to focus on the screen and not look at the keyboard and automatically make any adjustments I needed to complete the missions more quickly and without dying.
Edward Baransky PSY 230 TR 8AM
I am traditional in the sense that I feel video games are taking away from other past times that are more “wholesome” pastimes that encourage exercise and mingling. However, your blog reminds me that the world is changing due to development of such technology and video gaming gives you skills that are becoming an integral part of life today. Examples of this include microsopic and endoscopic surgeries, flying drone airplanes on dangerous military missions, using robots to fix the space station and deactivate bombs, etc. All of these require dexterous fingers and enhanced visual and spatial capabilities for the betterment of society.
Erum Zaidi, PSY 230
Green and Bavelier (2003) thoroughly prove the most advantageous reasons to delve into the often addictive and time-consuming world of interactive video games; it enhances the human capacity of visual attention and its spatial distribution (535). Green and Bavelier establish changes in different aspects of visual attention in habitual video-game players as compared with non-video-game players through five experiments (534).
In reality, video games are addictive and even though the experiment procedurals from Green and Bavelier (2003) weren’t excessive, for example experiment five –training- subjects underwent training for one hour per day for 10 days. Without official scholarly research, I have made a relative observation just by working at the school’s gameroom three times a week, at least 6 customers play video games non-stop for my entire shift, which is minimum three hours. Thus the question is posed, “are video games all that bad?!” Answer: it is more than it isn’t from a health perspective, but is it conducive and practical for all of us?
Sure, as Green and Bavelier proved in their 2003 essay, video games enhance levels of attentiveness and it is wonderful for the human advancement in general. However, I am quite biased against the level of necessity video games should grow to be in our lives (although in children’s development I agree that video games are appropriate) since my friends’ two family members suffered from video game caused epilepsy in the early 90s. Evidence of this in at least 50 cases and more recently from a 2002 game named “Spyro”, in Davidson and Klarsen’s, “Video Games. Gale Encyclopedia of Children’s Health: Infancy through Adolescence” is apparent.
I admit, too much of basically anything can have its own adverse affects and video games do enhance attention and as noted in David and Klarsen’s 2003 essay, “[there were] no lasting neurological damage [caused by video games] as of 2004 …linked to these seizures.”
Personally, If you don’t plan to become a medical surgeon or some other profession that would require or explicitly increase efficacy in areas such as hand-eye coordination or concentration, then overall video games aren’t all that critical for mainly adults-the positive effects were noted by Davidson and Klarsen’s, “Video Games. Gale Encyclopedia of Children’s Health: Infancy through Adolescence”.
Adia Clark
Psy 230
Though previous studies (mentioned in the paper) have found that perceptual learning is specific to the trained task and cannot be generalized to new tasks, Green and Bavelier (2003) set out to prove otherwise. In this study, the authors seek to demonstrate that a specific task, action-video-game-playing, does indeed influence a range of visual skills.
The first question the authors want to answer is also the most basic: “Does video-game playing increase attentional capacity?” In other words, “Does training in a specific task result in perceptual learning?” By measuring a change in attentional capacity, only then can we ascertain perceptual learning has occurred. The authors measured this change in two clever ways. Here, I will discuss the only the first one. In this experiment, we deal with a phenomenon brought to our attention by Dreyfus (2002): the difference between a “novice”, or non-video game player, and “expert”, or video game player in this instance. In other words, the better you are at a task, the less you need to think about it. Hence, since the brain is not preoccupied, it can hypothetically pay attention to other things. When we are doing a task but paying attention to something else, we term this “distraction”. Green and Bavelier (2003) proposed that the video-game player (VGP) will have a large distraction effect (will be able to pay attention to things other than the given task) compared to a non video-game player (NVPG) who will have to concentrate hard at the task in hand. Consequently, NVPGs will have little attention left to spend elsewhere, rendering their distraction effect small. By using the flanker compatibility test, the study was able to confirm this hypothesis.
Next, two tests were conducted to see if this enhancement of attentional capacity remained over space and time by using spatial distribution tests and exploring the bottleneck trend respectively. It was found that VGPs surpassed NVPGs in all these assessments. If one is to scrutinize this study, however, several confounding factors are readily apparent. The most important of these is the possibility of a selection bias: VPGs may have superior attentional skills to begin with and thus gravitated to video game playing naturally. The more this group plays, the better their inherent skill becomes. On the flip side, NVPGs have below average skill in such tasks and hence have avoided video game playing/decreased exposure to it. Inorder to exclude the confounding variables, a clever fifth test was set up. Here, NVPGs were trained in playing a difficult action video game. The control group was trained to play Tetris. The idea here is that the action packed video game requires attention in several different areas at once while Tetris is about a singular task (fitting a shape). This allows for a control in measuring improvement of the visual and spatial skill. The results confirmed that the NVPGs trained on the action game performed better than their counterparts in regards to the mentioned skills.
I think that when we learn something or are exposed to something for the first time, we treat it as a novel experience. This means that we use our brain and its faculties to concentrate on this new task at hand. It is possible to learn without being aware of it- this is what “experts” do. Is it possible to learn without a mind? Well, I will answer this with a question of my own: what does it mean to learn? How do we know that learning has taken place? The simplest answer is that a change in behavior indicates learning. Don’t we need to process information (consciously or subconsciously) to exact a change in behavior? This organic information processing unit is the brain. I think that doing something repeatedly does indeed cause a change in the brain. Perhaps we store this information differently because repeating tasks makes the task automatic. In other words, we become so familiar with it that we may treat the task as an extension of our self. This is significant to human beings because it allows us to multi-task and pay attention to several things at once. If every task needed conscious effort, life would be extremely tedious and we would be unable to respond to threats effectively.
Erum Zaidi , PSY 230
Video Gaming and Attention:
This study has furthered my belief that video games do help to increase your attention span as well as other things. I have played video games throughout my life and I would have to say that I also have a rather high attention span. I am able to play action video games with no problem, as well as a long lecture or boring movie. These types of games require you to pay attention to many different aspects of the game. Just like in experiment one, I have found that the more that you play the better you get at these games. That is why after continuously playing the games over a period of time made the non-video gamers become better at them; this goes back to the belief of the beginner to expert steps in learning. Over time without their knowledge their attention levels increased; also without there knowledge it increases hand-eye coordination greatly.
I also agree with the experiment in the fact that it was hard to find the people who were non video gamers. There had to be a reason that they did not play video games. They could have tried and not been good so they gave up. They might possibly have low attention skills. These people might also have low visual-motor coordination which would affect them at the visually demanding parts of the tasks.
By having the players juggle various tasks during Medal of Honor the players increased their capacity of visual attention, its spatial distribution and its resolution.
It may seem to be rather mindless but its quite the contrary.
Bryant psy 230
Green and Bavelier (2003) discussed about the potential consequences — perceptual and motor skills which followed by playing video games. They used the flanker compatibility effect and attentional blink task as the experimental paradigms and assumed that if VGPs have the greater attentional capacity, they should exhaust their visual attentional resources more slowly than NVGPs when the task is getting more difficult in the first experiment. Also, using the concept of attentional blink task test the enhanced capacities after vedio-game training can be applied to a purely visual bottleneck and generalized to the amodal one as well.
I deem that the video game just like a training in a more interesting way. Because I think the VGPs could have an inherently talent but also play the games more often than the NVGPs. By doing this, VGPs could enhance some specific skills and become good at this kind of task. Just like the old saying “ Practice makes perfects.” However, usually we will think playing video games is bad, because when people are addicted into this they might forget time and the schedule. In generally, I personally don’t think it is all bad with playing video games.
Chi Fang, Psy 230
The Green and Bavelier study (2003) stated that action video game playing is capable of altering a range of visual skills. In the study, habitual game players and non video game players were used to show an increase of visual attention. The video game players played video games for at least four days per week, one hour a day for six months while the non video players had little or no game usage in six months but under went training. It is evident that the continued exposure to video game playing caused changes in the brain. The study is somewhat similar to the Dreyfus article,”Intelligence Without Representation” regarding how we go from being a novice to becoming an expert which is through repeating experiences.
The study also showed that we are not always aware of the amount of information we are retaining and storing which makes it possible for us to perform certain skills without consciously using our minds. The question was, ” Is is true that video games are really bad”? After reading this study, my answer is, not if it enhances our attention.
Brenda Alleyne Psy 230
So I realized in class that I never posted, I know smart move on my part! But here it is….
The study of Green and Baveilier (2003) experimented to find the effects of video games on perceptual, motor and visual skills. There were five experiments carried out on video game players and non video game players from ages 18-23. The first experiment measured enumeration; the second was about field of view, the third attention over space, the fourth attention over time and the fifth performance before training. There were two different types of video games used; Tetris and Medal of Honor.
In my opinion, video games are a great way of getting someone to learn. Although there are people who go overboard with “gaming” there are multiple perks to video games. For instance, video games can improve motor skills and visual skills. As shown in the study Green and Bavelier (2003) those who were “gamers” had better visual skills than “non gamers”. Another great skill learned is multitasking. While our generation has learned to do this on our own, games allow for us to enhance these skills.
As a student teacher, I was able to use video games in my classroom multiple times to help the first graders learn various things. I have found that for practicing math problems, video games are helpful. For enforcing reading techniques, video games are not the way to go.
Khushbu Kheti
PSY 230