The Influence Of Age,gender,extraversion And Experience On Performance Of Aspatial Computer Game.
11 Pages 2866 Words
The influence of age, gender, extraversion and experience on performance of a spatial computer game.
Computer games are a popular pastime. Their Psychological impacts have recently become of interest to Psychologists. This is partly due to their nature, popularity and increasing accessibility via the internet. Over the current years, their Psychological impacts have received a rather negative evaluation. Links to aggression are particularly well documented. The general consensus here is games violent and aggressive in nature may facilitate the provocation of aggressive thoughts and possibly actions. (Frindte and Obwexer, 2003; Carnagey and Anderson, 2004; Uhlmann and Swanson, 2004 and Gentile, Lynch, Linder and Walsh, 2004).
Recently, the more positive aspects of game playing have been highlighted. Experience of computer games has been suggested to influence the development of certain cognitive skills. For instance, McClurg and Chaille, (1987), reported participation in a computer based mental rotation task, significantly improved participants ability to successfully complete a spatial ability measure. Gender and age did not significantly influence this. More recently, a similar study found this improvement to be greater in participants who were previously classed as possessing relatively weak spatial skills. Gender was found not to influence this. (Subrahmanyam and Greenfield, 1994, cited in Cocking and Greenfield, 1996, p95-114). Both these findings suggest games incorporating spatial awareness may be educationally useful for developing these skills in those whose ability is poor.
Yuji, (1996), investigated the effects of past game experience on parallel processing skills using a computer based discriminatory perceptual task. The reaction time of participants with a history of game use was significantly faster, particularly with regards to colour discrimination. Conclusions suggested ex...