Video Games Kan Mak U Smartr

Jason C. Allaire Anne McLaughlin

North Carolina State University

East Coast Game Conference

April 26, 2012

Gains Through Gaming Lab(www.gainsthroughgaming.org)

• Co-Directors– Jason Allaire, Ph.D.– Anne McLaughlin, Ph.D.

• Research Collaborator– Maribeth Gandy, Ph.D (GA Tech)

• Doctoral Students– Amanda Trujillo– Laura Whitlock– Landon LaPorte

• National Science Foundation– #0905127, Division of Information & Intelligent Systems

Gains Through Gaming Lab(www.gainsthroughgaming.org)

• Identify commercially available video games that improve adults’ memory and cognitive functioning– Characteristics/properties of games– Conditions under which they are played

• Develop video games that incorporate the characteristics/properties that produce gains

• Consulting services– Help developers make games that would ALSO appeal to

older adults – Not old people games

Negative Video Game Stereotypes

Negative Video Game Stereotypes

Negative Video Game Stereotypes

• “Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik prepared himself for the bombing and shootings that killed 77 people by playing World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare for a year.” CNN

Overlooked Positive Video Game Outcomes

• Greater ability to perspective take• Better mood• Deal with post- traumatic stress• Increased hand-eye coordination• Reduced levels of pain• Distraction from snacking • Increased imagination• Greater perseverance• Better cognition

Video Games and Cognition

• Adolescents and adults who play video games tend to have better:– reaction time– spatial ability– problem solving

• When video games have been used as an intervention improvements in cognitive abilities are seen

Video Games and Cognition

• Increased field of view – action video game (Grand Theft Auto, Half-life, Counter-Strike, Marvel versus Capcom, Rogue Spear, and Super Mario Kart)

– Green & Bavelier, 2006a, 2006b, 2007

• Spatial ability - Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault– Feng, Spence, & Pratt, 2007

• Children improved in mental rotation test (MRT) scores playing Tetris

– De Lisi & Wolford, 2002; Terlecki et al., 2008

• Increased reaction time – Atari games (Packman and Donkey Kong)

– Dustman and colleagues 1992– Clark, Lanphear, and Riddick 1987

Video Games and Cognition

• If video games can be used to improve cognitive abilities in adolescents and adults could they be used in people who might really need it?

• Our research focuses on improving the cognitive functioning of older adults….

Aging and Cognition

• General start of age related change is over 65• Most abilities start to decline surprisingly early

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20's 30's 40's 50's 60's 70's 80's

Perceptual Speed

Spatial Ability

Reasoning

Memory

Knowledge

Age

Wor

se

B

etter

Why Older Adults?

• Cognitive functioning declines with age• Declines in cognition can lead to serious

consequences– Dementia

• Baby Boomers are aging

• Why you should care about baby boomers…..

Why you should care about Baby Boomers:They out number you

• By 2020, 36% of Americans will be age 50 and over– almost one in five (17 percent) will be 65 or older

Why you should care about Baby Boomers:They have more money than you

• Wealthiest generation in the U.S.• annual spending power of over $2 trillion.

Why you should care about Baby Boomers:They are already playing video games

• According to the 2005 annual report by the Entertainment Software Association half of all Americans are playing video and computer games– 25% are more than 50 years old– another 45% are between 18 and 49 (although no further

breakdown is provided in this age bracket)– the average age of the most frequent game purchaser is

40 (ESA, 2006)

• Gameboomers.com– Forum with over 300,000 posts

Why you should care about Baby Boomers:They are familiar with the ‘setting’ of many

games• Star Wars – 1977

– Boomers were 13 to 31 years old

• Dungeons and Dragons - 1974, 1977– Boomers were 10 to 28 years old

• Wolfenstein – 1992– Boomers were 28 to 46 years old

• Atari 2600 – 1977– Boomers were 13 to 31 years old

Aging and Cognition: Traditional Interventions

• Over 30 years of cognitive intervention research• Primary focus is the development use of skills for a

single task• Memory Example:

– A list of numbers or words– Teach mnemonic techniques (chunking, categorizing, etc)– Give a list again and see if they improve

Aging and Cognition: Traditional Interventions

• Training in a specific ability produces significant gains for that target ability

• Little to no evidence that improving an ability actually translates to improvements in real-life– No transfer

Video Games as Interventions

• National Institute on Aging (NIA) has called for non-traditional approaches to interventions

• Quilting• Exercise• Acting class• Video games

– Myth vs. Reality

Video games as interventions: Myth

• Brain Agetm and Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day!– Over 4 million units sold each

Video games as intervention: Myth

• Brain Training Websites– Luminosity– Play With your Mind– Happy Neuron– CogFit

• All these sites use Flash games that are based on the principles of traditional interventions

Video games as intervention: Reality

• Gains in prose recall with memory games – Towle, Edman, & Lincoln, 1988

• Gains in memory with in-house games– Farris, Bates, Resnick, & Stabler, 1994

• Decreased reaction time – Atari games (Packman and Donkey Kong)

– Dustman and colleagues 1992– Clark, Lanphear, and Riddick 1987

• Decreases in task switching cost – Rise of Nations– Basok, Boot, Voss & Kramer 2008

Video games as intervention: The Case of Rise of Nations (Basak et al., 2008 )

• 40 older adults– average age = 70– 20 played RON for at least 23.5 hours (RON group)– The other 20 did nothing (Control group)

• Relative to the control group, the RON group exhibited substantial on many cognitive tasks:– task switching– inductive (abstract) reasoning– short-term memory– working memory

Video Games as Intervention: A post-hoc review

• Three common attributes:– Novelty– Socially interactive environment– Attention-demanding tasks carried out over a period of

time

Essential properties of the gaming environment: Novelty

• Interacting with novel stimuli forms new connections in the brain and strengthens rarely used pathways

– Olesen, Westerberg, & Klingberg, 2003

• A stimulating environment promotes the growth of neural connections

– Greenough & Volkmar, 1973; Rosenzweig, 1966

Essential properties of the gaming environment: Social Interaction

• Social interaction relates to higher cognitive abilities in old age

– Barnes, Mendes de Leon, Wilson, Bienias, & Evans, 2004; Lövdén, Ghisletta, and Lindenberger, 2005

• Older adults with high social interaction show neurological changes that improve their ability to deal with stress

– Eisenberger, Taylor, Gable, Hilmert, & Lieberman, 2007

• Social interaction is related to life expectancy– Maier & Klumb, 2005

Essential properties of the gaming environment: Sustained Attention

• Attention-demanding tasks carried out over a period of time– Single task

• Single task is good• Switching between multiple tasks is better

– Variable Priority Training

Our Recent Research Findings

• What we do in a nutshell:– We test older adults cognitive functioning– We have them play a video game

• Varying conditions

– We test them again and see if they got better

• World of Warcraft Study• Wii Study

WoW Study

• Experimental Group (n=17)– Time spent in-game: mean=14.99 hours, – Average # of quests = 14– Average level = 11

• Control group: n=20• Average age = 67 years• Only 2 people in the intervention group

Whitlock, L., McLaughlin, A., & Allaire, J.C. (In Press). Individual Differences in Response to Cognitive Training: Using a Multi-modal, Attentionally Demanding Game-Based Intervention Computers in Human Behavior. Computers in Human Behavior.

Why did we pick WoW?

• World of Warcraft– Cognitively demanding– Novel– Social Interaction– Sustained Attention– Switching between tasks

• Finding your way to quest objective• Killing Defias Bandits that attack you

– Quests are cognitively demanding

Results: Elders with poor attention at pretest improved the most

Results: People with poor visio-spatial ability improved the most

WoW Study Take Home Messages

• Older adults will play a game called World of Warcraft

• Playing WoW for a realtively brief period of time improves some cognitive abilities

• The individuals who need the improvement the most benefitted the most

The Wii Study

• Determine the critical properties of the gaming environment that produce improvement

• Social Interaction• Sustained Attention

• Create an older adult specific game that loads on the critical properties identified

Focus Group Results

• 2 groups, 17 participants total• Mean age 75.15 years• ~half men, half women

• Discussed and demonstrated games from the task analyses

• Given knowledge of amount of time required by a future study

Games that fulfilled the Task Requirements

• World of Warcraft • Riven – puzzle game• Spore CreatureCreator –creativity game• BoomBlox – multiplayer puzzle game

Boom Blox• Reverse Jenga

Design of Study

• Pretest Intervention Posttest • Interventions Groups:

– Attentional demand• Lower • Higher• Control (no game)

– Social interaction• Alone• In a group

Measures

• Pretest and posttest battery of psychological measures– Cognition– Well-being– Health– Stress– personality

Measures• Added an

accelerometer to the Wii remote– Record all the

movements with Wii remote

• Galvanic skin response (GSR)– Arousal

Measures

• The Wiicord

Participants

• 154 older adults• Average 78 years old (63 – 97 years)• 55% female• Average college degree

Do Older Adults Play Video Games?

Is there a Relationship between playing video games and cognitive functioning?

Play Video Games (0 = no; 1 = yes)

Thinking speed .28*

Spatial ability .31*

Reasoning .26*

Memory .25*

Perceived Benefits and Costs

Perceived Benefits and Costs

Participants who played the Wii got faster compared to control

Improvements were greatest when ability and challenge were matched

Slow Participants Fast Participants

Improvements were greatest when ability and challenge were matched

Slow Participants Fast Participants

Conclusions

• Almost half our sample reported playing video games at least once a month

• An overwhelming majority of older adults believed that playing video games did or can improve their mental and psychical health– Surprisingly they still believed video games could be

addictive /time consuming• Individuals who reported playing video games had

better cognitive functioning at the outset

Conclusions

• Our BoomBlox intervention significantly improved older adults cognitive functioning

• More improvements when ability and challenge were matched– Low ability + low demand training = improvements– High ability + High demand training = improvements

• Adaptability of the game to player ability is key– Easy mode vs hard mode– Can we push people from one mode to another?

Future Directions

• Currently developing a game with colleagues at GA-Tech• Continue to identify the specific characteristics of games

that produce cognitive improvements• What factors can be manipulated to make commercial

games more appealing to older adults?• How can we incorporate factors that improve cognition

into a game without it being obvious?• We are always evaluating new games for new studies