rebeccag92

Psychologists have published research which has found that playing video games in which the player engages in shooting characters in a first person perspective improves their performance on a visual attention task (Wu, Cheng, Feng, D’Angelo, Alain & Spence, 2012). The improvement is due to increased inhibition of distractors; the brain is more able to ignore extraneous stimuli.

The Experiment:

• Twenty-five participants who hadn’t played a video game in the last four years spent a cumulative 10 hours on a game; playing in either one or two hour sessions.
• 16 participants played the first person shooting game whilst the remaining 9 were assigned to the control condition and played a 3D puzzle game.
• To measure their attention, participants had their brain waves recorded whilst trying to detect a target object among other distractions, before and after playing their game.

The Results:       

• Participants who played the first person shooter game and showed the greatest improvement on the attention task showed significant changes in their brain waves.
• The changes present in electrical activity were consistent with those which enhance visual attention and suppress distracting information.
• This improvement was thought to be due to increased inhibition of distractors.
• Those who did not show great improvement on the attention task and participants in the control group showed no significant changes in their brain waves.

A Critical Evaluation:

• Methodology:
  • The experiment lacked ecological validity; the attention task and the video game were presented on either computer or television screens which have a narrow field of vision in comparison with the real world.
  • The brain scans took place before and after playing which provided strong data and basis for comparison. However if brain waves had been monitored during play, results could have been more specific and therefore potential implications wider. If the research had highlighted the exact stimuli which produced the change, or the time needed to improve visual attention and inhibit distractors an intervention or procedure could be devised and used for tasks such as driving which would benefit from such improvements.
  • This studied only examined the effects of video games played for a relatively short amount of time; members on a forum for gamers (forums.gametrailers, 2011) said that they played for anywhere between 3-12 hours at a time. Therefore this study is not representative of the cognitive activity of regular gamers. Therefore this research can be argued to lack population validity as the results cannot be generalised to long term videogame players who engage in longer sessions; the target population.
    

• Supporting Evidence:
  • Research by Greenfield, DeWinstanley, Kilpatrick and Kaye (1994) found that playing videogames does facilitate attention and decrease response times to an expected stimulus. However when a stimulus is not expected the increased inhibition of distractors caused by video games increased response times.
  • Research by Goldstein, Cajko, Oosterbroek, Michielsen, Van Houten, Salverda and Femke (1997) found that elderly people who played videogames for five hours per week for five weeks showed significantly improved reaction times. This research supports the findings of Wu et al (2012) and indicates a positive potential implication for videogames as training method to increase cognitive awareness.

• Contradictory Evidence:
  • Anderson (2004) found that playing violent video games significantly increases aggressive behaviour, aggressive cognitions and aggressive mood, they were also found to increase cardiovascular arousal. This research highlights ethical considerations; are the benefits of improved visual attention worth the cost of potential harm not only to participants but to the general population, if encouraged to play such games as used in this experiment?
  • Anderson and Dill (2000) found that such effects on behaviour were present both short term (immediately after playing a violent videogame) and lasted long term.

References:

Anderson (2004)

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197103000976

forums.gametrailers (2011)

http://forums.gametrailers.com/thread/how-long-are-your-gaming-sessi/1208077

Greenfield et al (1994)

http://ac.els-cdn.com/0193397394900086/1-s2.0-0193397394900086-main.pdf?_tid=cd9e21e4697bda70245704a31c348f5d&acdnat=1335629370_cdc117e6452c032d8459b1b014e06c59

Goldstein et al (1997)

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/sbp/sbp/1997/00000025/00000004/art00006

Wu et al (2012)

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_00192

As first year psychology students I’m sure we’ve all read journal articles over this last year and had no clue what was being said; probably we’ve shut the book or closed the webpage and walked away. Conversely I’m sure we’ve also experienced the pivotal moment when something that originally seemed alien and pure gibberish starts to make sense.

Yet for the average layperson science still remains unintelligible and remote due to the use of jargon and subject specific technical terms. But is this the way it should be? Should science be for the scientist only?

Psychology is a science, but it is also the study of human behaviour, and as such the results of psychological research are much more relevant and applicable to the general population. Unlike astrophysics or neurochemistry issues explored in psychological research are likely to affect us or somebody close to us. For example research into Autism Spectrum Disorder is wonderfully translated on the National Autistic Society website where I would adamantly argue it is more valuable than written in a scientific journal most people will never see and even if they did most likely not understand.

Psychological research in the main, such as social or evolutionary studies should also be comparatively easier to translate into language which the average person would understand; neuropsychology will always be more difficult due to the unavoidable necessity of anatomical and technical terms.  Jargon does, unequivocally serve a purpose; the use of universally classified and uniformed terms eases the sharing of information, reduces misconceptions and increases replicability thus aiding the progression of science. It is also more expedient to use scientific terms; writing a research report or publishing research is an arduous task in itself, but to translate and explain terminology, methods and results so the average person not familiar with such language could understand and gain from it would turn such writing into an infeasible and overly protracted task.

Sword (2008) asked professors what qualities they most appreciated in an academic article; the professors reported that their favourite journals were passionate and interesting, told a story and avoided the use of jargon unless absolutely necessary. So why is it that the majority of articles are still overflowing with such technical terminology? Sword suggests it is the way academics believe it should be done; that is the way their predecessors wrote and as such it is the way they shall write. However now more than ever the general public are interested in science and as such science has a responsibility to make it accessible to every person (Turney 1996).

Whilst it is clear that publishing science so that it is understandable to the average man or woman is no easy task I believe it should be accomplished; people have an interest they never had before to know more and understand more about the world around us, scientists should be encouraging such curiosity not segregating the general public due to a lack of scientific vocabulary.

‘When I’s Meet: Sharing Subjective Experience With Someone From the Outgroup’ (Pinel & Long 2012)  A Critical Evaluation

The self can be split into two parts; the ‘Me’ and the ‘I’ (Mead 1913). The ‘Me’ is an objective image of ourselves, comprising of our personality, values, beliefs and demographics, it is the image we see in the mirror. The ‘I’ is a subjective experiencer; it sees, hears, feels and does, it also thinks and dreams to form a stream of consciousness’ (James 1918).

Me-sharing refers to people connecting or bonding due a shared trait or belief.

I-sharing happens when two people believe they have shared a subjective moment of passing consciousness.

Pinel & Long’s research aims to explore the effects of I-sharing upon the amount two individuals may like each other.

Hypothesis:

‘Participants will prefer the same-sex partner when she I-shares with them. I-sharing with an outgroup member would undermine and perhaps even completely counteract any preference observed when the ingroup member also was the I-sharer’

Method:

55 female Psychology undergraduates were randomly assigned to a condition in a 2 x 2 mixed factorial design. Participant’s completed a demographic questionnaire on a computer then saw the answers of two computer generated partners; for each participant one would be female (a member of the In-group) and the other male (the member of the out-group). The participant and partners then played 12 trials of an ‘Imaginif’ game, this was the I-sharing manipulation as participants would not be able to rely on pre-existing knowledge of the topics and instead had to rely on their subjective thoughts during the moment. Participants completed the game and then saw the answers of their partners;, one partner would have answered 8/12 of the trials the same, therefore becoming the I-sharer. After the trials participant’s answered questionnaires pertaining to the amount they liked each partner, felt they had connected and which they would prefer to work with again. Participants then completed a Collective Self Esteem scale which was modified to refer to social identity in regard to social gender

Results:

93% of participants who shared with the in group member chose her to work with in future experimental tasks. However 100% of particpant’s who I-shared with the outgroup member chose to work with him. Which suggests that I-sharing with an outgroup member counteracts and overcomes social identity pre-considerations.

Critical Evaluation:

The participant’s only interacted with two partners, and the design was very dichotomous; one partner was an In-group member whilst the other was not, and one partner I-shared whilst the other did not. In real life relationships are rarely so clear cut and therefore this study can be argued to lack ecological validity.

The ‘Imaginif’ game also lacks ecological validity. I-sharing is represented as a deeper level of connection, whereas the game is largely superficial and meaningless as a reflection upon someone’s subjective conscious. The use of multiple choice answers to the ‘Imaginif’ trials can also be criticised as it suppresses the free flow of conscious thought.

There is a significant gender bias, only female participants were used, therefore the data only represents one half of the population so could not be accurately generalised to males.

The experiment used repeated measures which can cause practise effects and fatigue amongst participants, however as only 12 trials were used and the task was fairly entertaining I would not consider such effects a significant threat. As same results were found across the trials the data can be considered is reliable.

The partners were computer generated so as to remove any bias towards appearance. The control of such extraneous variables increases the internal validity of this experiment as it is more likely the participant’s chose according to the choices of their partners in the ‘Imaginif’ game.

Welcome to WordPress.com. After you read this, you should delete and write your own post, with a new title above. Or hit Add New on the left (of the admin dashboard) to start a fresh post.

Here are some suggestions for your first post.

1. You can find new ideas for what to blog about by reading the Daily Post.
2. Add PressThis to your browser. It creates a new blog post for you about any interesting  page you read on the web.
3. Make some changes to this page, and then hit preview on the right. You can always preview any post or edit it before you share it to the world.