Abstract
Use of videogames (VGs) is almost ubiquitous in preadolescents’ and adolescents’ everyday life. One of the most intriguing research topics about positive effects of VG use is about the domain of visuospatial competencies. Previous research show that training with videogames enables children and adolescents to improve their scores in visuospatial tests (such as mental rotation of shapes and cubes), and that such training could overcome gender differences in these domains. Our study aimed at (1) verifying the positive effects of videogame use in the visuospatial domain both for male and female adolescents and preadolescents and (2) verifying whether the visualization style (2D or isometric 3D) of the VG has an influence about the positive effects of gaming. Six measures of visuospatial competency were administered to 318 preadolescents (mean of age = 13.94 years, range 10–18) prior and after a 3-day training with 2D and 3D Tetris. Results indicate that (1) gaming on the whole has slight positive effects both for males and females in enhancing visuospatial competencies, at least in the short term, and (2) it seems that participants who used the videogame with 2D graphics obtained greater improvements in the mental rotation domain while the participants who used the videogame with 3D graphics obtained greater improvements in the spatial visualization domain. However, a general learning effect between T1 and T2 was measured, which was found regardless of Experimental condition, indicating that the effect of training with videogames can be less relevant than expected.
Highlights
Visuospatial competencies are that realm of cognitive ability definable as: “[. . .] skills in representing, transforming, generating, and recalling symbolic, non-linguistic information” (Linn and Petersen, 1985, p. 1482)
As children progress in their development, these skills are very important for understanding and mastering material in the physical sciences, engineering, architecture, medicine, etc., visuo-spatial skills are central in many everyday tasks and are closely related to academic achievement in STEM disciplines
Regarding the data derived from the questionnaire on videogame use habits, 98.1% of the participants declared that they played videogames habitually, and the mean of hours per week of videogame play was 5.88
Summary
Visuospatial competencies are that realm of cognitive ability definable as: “[. . .] skills in representing, transforming, generating, and recalling symbolic, non-linguistic information” (Linn and Petersen, 1985, p. 1482). Early studies about visuospatial competencies and VG use have shown how training with ad hoc videogames leads to an improvement in performance on pencil and paper visuospatial tests (Gagnon, 1985; McClurg and Chaillè, 1987; Okagaki and Frensch, 1994; Subrahmanyam and Greenfield, 1994), and possibly lessens gender differences (Halpern, 2000; Ferguson et al, 2008) Moving from these preliminary results, researchers tried to maximize the ecological validity of the studies by leaving the lab setting and focusing on the effects of training with VGs in more naturalistic settings, using off-the shelf videogames as a training tool. The following RQ is posited: Do the graphics (2D vs. 3D) affect visuospatial competencies differently?
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