Schenk, Lech, & Suchan. 2017. Games people play: How video games improve probabilistic learning



Author's purpose:To prove that playing video games leads to improved performance in regions of the brain.

The authors created two groups consisting of gamers and non-gamers based on if they played video games for more than fifteen hours a week for gamers or less than four hours a week for non-gamers. The mean age for the gamer group was 24.6 years and it consisted of thirteen males and four females. The mean age of the non-gamer group was 27.5 years and it also consisted of thirteen males and four females. In order to test the brain activity of these participants they took the WPT assessment while inside an MRI machine. The WPT, or The Weather Prediction Task, is an assessment that asks participants to “classify one to three (out of four) different cue cards into one of two weather categories (rain or sun) based on feedback they receive for their actions” (Schenk, Lech, Suchan 208). While inside the MRI the participants were equipped with goggles and keyboards that were MRI compatible in order to take this assessment. It was found that gamers scored better in the less certain categories than did non-gamers.

This compares well to other materials I’ve read as I previously read an article entitled Playing Video Games: Learning and Information Literacy by Sabrina Gumulak which stated that people who play video games are more information literate than those who do not. This relates because both of these show that playing video games can enhance cognition and learning abilities.

The keywords this article contains are: probabilistic categorization learning, video games, hippocampus, and enrichment of environment.

Significant texts that were cited were:

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The questions this article raises for me are:
How do video games enhance regions of the brain?
What benefits can arise from the brain enhancements created by video games?

Is it possible to measure the benefits of video games in everyday activities?

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