Evaluating the Cognitive Consequences of Playing Portal for a Short Duration

Abstract

Learning physics often requires overcoming common misconceptions based on naïve interpretations of observations in the everyday world. One proposed way to help learners build appropriate physics intuitions is to expose them to computer simulations in which motion is based on Newtonian principles. In addition, playing video games that require spatial processing may also facilitate the development of spatial skills that have been associated with learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics areas. Two studies were conducted to examine whether playing the first-person perspective puzzle game Portal causes improvements in physics intuitions and spatial cognition skills. In Experiment 1, college students played Portal, the two-dimensional puzzle game Tetris, or the anagram game TextTwist for 75 minutes. There were no significant differences on measures of naïve physics reasoning (selected from the Force Concept Inventory) or measures of spatial cognition (mental rotation and perspective taking). To determine whether Portal could influence formal physics learning, in Experiment 2 participants viewed a brief lesson on Newton's laws of motion after playing one of the three games for 1 hour. The groups did not differ on subsequent tests of physics learning. This study shows that Portal was not successful in priming intuitions about motion or spatial abilities related to physics learning.

The effect of games and simulations on higher education: a systematic literature review

“…There has been an impact evaluation across subject disciplines, such as Computer Science (Strycker, 2016), Engineering (Chaves et al, 2015), Physics (Adams, 2016), Medicine (Dankbaar, 2016), Nursing (Sarabia-Cobo, 2016), Management (Geithner & Menzel, 2016), Political Sciences (Jones & Bursens, 2015), Education (Ke, 2015), Languages (Franciosi, 2016), and Social Sciences (Cózar-Gutiérrez & Sáez-López, 2016).…”

“…Tasks framed as games and simulations are deployed to develop a diverse range of cognitive skills, such as deep learning (Vos & Brennan, 2010;Young et al, 2012;Erhel & Jamet, 2013;Crocco et al, 2016), critical thinking and scientific reasoning (Beckem & Watkins, 2012;Halpern et al, 2012;Ahmad, 2013), action-directed learning (Lu et al, 2014), transformative learning (Kleinheskel, 2014), decision-making (Tiwari, 2014), knowledge acquisition and content understanding (Terzidou, 2012;Elias, 2014;Fu et al, 2016), spatial abilities (Adams et al, 2016), and problem solving Lancaster, 2014). The effect of games and simulations on learning remains a controversial issue amongst researchers in the field, as it will be further confirmed in this article.…”

Effects of Action Video Game Play on Arithmetic Performance in Adults

“…However, the beneficial effects of playing Portal were not supported by Adams et al.’s (2015) study showing that playing Portal for 75 minutes failed to improve spatial cognition skills and physics intuitions in college students. The authors randomly assigned participants to three video game training groups: Portal , Tetris (spatial control group), and TextTwist (non-spatial control group).…”

Modelo experimental de recombinação de repertórios em humanos em um ambiente virtual

“…O primeiro jogo da série, Portal® (lançado em 2007), já foi utilizado para estudar a aprendizagem de conceitos de física básica (Adams, Pilegard, & Mayer, 2015) e sua sequência, Portal 2® (lançado em 2011), já foi utilizado em pesquisas de resolução de problemas (Foroughi et al, 2016;Shute & Wang, 2015) e aprendizagem de padrões (Vaddi et al, 2016). Ambos, Portal® e Portal 2®, são jogos na perspectiva em primeira pessoa (i.e.…”