Video games, along with the study of the brain have both advanced astronomically within that past few decades. Since the creation of video games, the question whether video games hurt or help the development of a human brain has been a strong topic to research. A study headed by Gregory Clemenson and Craig Stark in 2015 attempted to see how video games and hippocampal associated memory work together.
The part of the brain that this study refers to mainly is through associations of the hippocampus and memory. Clemenson and Stark (2015) attempted to look at ways to alleviate hippocampal cognitive deficits through sensory stimulations. They based their study from research done by Van Praag which has showed that changing an animal’s living environment …show more content…
Experiment 1A and 1B ‘s study was determined using video game questionnaires, enumeration tasks and the Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST). (Clemenson & Stark, 2015) The questionnaire assed the type of gamer a person was, how much the person spends playing games, how the person experiences games, if the gamer was competitive, and finally, it assed their performance in games in general. The enumeration task this study used originated in 2006 by C.S. Green and D. Bavelier. The enumeration task was done through showing a participant a screen displaying a transitioning theme of a fixated cross, 1-9 dots and a visual mask of 50 lines (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). After the barrage of displays, the participant would express the amount of dots that he or she saw to the best of his or her ability. Lastly, to summarize how the MST was used in this research, participants were shown 128 pictures of objects in repetition to encode the images (Clemenson and Stark, 2015). After the encoding period, the testing period began, in which 64 everyday objects were shown to the participants (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). The participants were given 3 choices to choose after a new stimulus. These choices were: the objects were the same, the objects were similar to the prior objects, or that the objects shown were brand new objects (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). The MST is the test that measures the …show more content…
Experiment 2 is more of a design in contrast to Experiment 1A and 1B being correlational designs. In experiment 2, the participants were given games to play, either a 2D game (Angry birds), or a 3D game (Super Mario 3D World). In this experiment, each participant was tested in three different tests named, Pretest, Posttest 1, and Posttest 2 (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). The experimenters used a cross-sectional design for this part; there were 2 groups that received 3 different conditions. These sessions were separated between 2 weeks each of either playing games or having no contact with video games. The research specified that for each participant, the second 2-week interval involved no video games. Experiment 2 also had a video game questionnaire and MST, but differed from the previous experiments with a water maze task (vWM) (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). The vWM was used as a virtual water maze in which the participant would go through using a computer program (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). Participants went through 12 trials through separate virtual mazes for 30 minutes a trial (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). Doing this allowed each participant to learn of parts of the mazes before the next tests. This part of the design was counterbalanced which allowed each group to go through each trial at least once (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). Lastly, 2 weeks after exploring the mazes, the participants were given 2 water probe
The part of the brain that this study refers to mainly is through associations of the hippocampus and memory. Clemenson and Stark (2015) attempted to look at ways to alleviate hippocampal cognitive deficits through sensory stimulations. They based their study from research done by Van Praag which has showed that changing an animal’s living environment …show more content…
Experiment 1A and 1B ‘s study was determined using video game questionnaires, enumeration tasks and the Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST). (Clemenson & Stark, 2015) The questionnaire assed the type of gamer a person was, how much the person spends playing games, how the person experiences games, if the gamer was competitive, and finally, it assed their performance in games in general. The enumeration task this study used originated in 2006 by C.S. Green and D. Bavelier. The enumeration task was done through showing a participant a screen displaying a transitioning theme of a fixated cross, 1-9 dots and a visual mask of 50 lines (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). After the barrage of displays, the participant would express the amount of dots that he or she saw to the best of his or her ability. Lastly, to summarize how the MST was used in this research, participants were shown 128 pictures of objects in repetition to encode the images (Clemenson and Stark, 2015). After the encoding period, the testing period began, in which 64 everyday objects were shown to the participants (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). The participants were given 3 choices to choose after a new stimulus. These choices were: the objects were the same, the objects were similar to the prior objects, or that the objects shown were brand new objects (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). The MST is the test that measures the …show more content…
Experiment 2 is more of a design in contrast to Experiment 1A and 1B being correlational designs. In experiment 2, the participants were given games to play, either a 2D game (Angry birds), or a 3D game (Super Mario 3D World). In this experiment, each participant was tested in three different tests named, Pretest, Posttest 1, and Posttest 2 (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). The experimenters used a cross-sectional design for this part; there were 2 groups that received 3 different conditions. These sessions were separated between 2 weeks each of either playing games or having no contact with video games. The research specified that for each participant, the second 2-week interval involved no video games. Experiment 2 also had a video game questionnaire and MST, but differed from the previous experiments with a water maze task (vWM) (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). The vWM was used as a virtual water maze in which the participant would go through using a computer program (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). Participants went through 12 trials through separate virtual mazes for 30 minutes a trial (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). Doing this allowed each participant to learn of parts of the mazes before the next tests. This part of the design was counterbalanced which allowed each group to go through each trial at least once (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). Lastly, 2 weeks after exploring the mazes, the participants were given 2 water probe