Video games have long been studied to measure their effects on people’s cognitive abilities. When reading about the problem-solving processes and techniques, I couldn’t help but think of how I use these concepts when I play games, specifically strategy games. These kinds of games test players with new, challenging obstacles that they must plan ahead for and overcome by generating new knowledge (Emihovich et al., 2020). My personal favorite strategy games come from the Total War series which involves two armies clashing on a battlefield with a variety of unit types that serve different roles. I used examples from these games to show the involvement of the problem-solving concepts we talked about.

I want to first address how the various obstacles to problem-solving can come into play in strategy games. Mental sets are one such hindrance that refers to our tendency to repeat a learned, effective solution to a past problem (Goldstein, 2021). The issue with this is that we may rely on the learned solution even when the intricacies of a problem have changed. An example from the Total War games would be learning that a ranged unit will quickly whittle down a standard infantry unit. However, this matchup changes when an infantry unit is heavily armored. At that point, a ranged unit would not get much value and only waste its precious ammunition. Players might make this mistake, though, simply because they’ve seen how effective ranged units were against infantry in the past. Committing this mistake would be the result of following a mental set.

There is another obstacle to problem-solving that comes into play in these games. Functional fixedness is a concept seen when we restrict an object to its normal function (Goldstein, 2021). We don’t see how an object could be used in a different way. In a Total War battle, different types of units have clearly defined roles: melee infantry holds the frontline, cavalry flanks, ranged units dish out damage from a safe distance. While these are the optimal roles of these unit types, your opponent may challenge you in ways where you’d need to use a unit for an unorthodox purpose. For example, if the enemy is flanking your artillery with a melee infantry unit, the player may have to react by intercepting with a ranged unit. This is not an ideal matchup, but it would save the more vulnerable artillery unit and buy time for a more effective counter to arrive and deal with the threat. Many players may not think to use a ranged unit in this matter simply because they know its purpose is to damage from distance. That player would be a victim of functional fixedness, however, and the flanking problem would remain unsolved.

Besides the obstacles to problem-solving, strategy games also see the player using problem-solving strategies. Means-end analysis is used when we solve a problem by focusing on the barrier(s) between the initial and goal states (Goldstein, 2021). We can gradually make our way toward that goal by creating subgoals focused on conquering one part of the problem at a time. In a Total War battle, the player may consider all of their options in shutting down an enemy artillery unit (a powerful threat). They’d have to consider how to get past all of the enemy units in between while taking minimal damage. It would be quite the challenge, but finding that solution using means-end analysis would put their problem-solving skills to the test. This experience has the potential to carry over into real-life problem-solving as well which is why video games, like the Total War series, can certainly be beneficial to our cognitive processes. 

References

Emihovich, B., Roque, N., Mason, J. (2020). Can Video Gameplay Improve Undergraduates’ Problem-Solving Skills? International journal of game-based learning. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8870796/

Goldstein, E. B. (2021). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (5th ed.). Cengage.

Some would say that creating memories is the point of life. Now imagine losing nearly all of your memories after living 46 years of life. This is the reality of Scott Bolzan after he hit his head following a slip in a bathroom. After waking up in the hospital, Bolzan couldn’t recognize his wife or remember any events or information about his life before the fall (Woodruff & Patria, 2010). Bolzan’s implicit, unconscious memories remained intact in that he retained his motor and conversation skills. However, his explicit, conscious memories, such as meeting his wife, were completely gone.

Doctors reassured Bolzan and his wife that memory loss was common after severe concussions and Bolzan would likely recover soon. This was not the case. While Bolzan’s short-term memory remained intact, his long-term memory did not return. Bolzan could not recall meeting his wife, having their children or being a star NFL player (Cahalan, 2011). Even when prompted with pictures from his wife, he had no memory of these events. This loss shows that Bolzan’s episodic memory was clearly damaged. At the same time, Bolzan was also unfamiliar with historical figures, celebrities and common items like cell phones and televisions (Cahalan, 2011). He wasn’t even sure how many planets were in space or what the role of a “wife” was, though he did remember the rules of football. This reveals that Bolzan’s semantic memory regarding facts was also harmed by his accident but to a lesser degree, perhaps.

Bolzan’s attempts to hide the severity of his memory issues were unsuccessful and he was ordered to have a SPECT scan done by his doctor. This type of scan uses a radioactive substance to produce 3-D images, color-coded in order to show blood flow (Woodruff & Patria, 2010). The scan showed a severe decrease in blood flow to the temporal and frontal lobes of Bolzan’s brain (Cahalan, 2011). The temporal lobe contains the hippocampus which is where short-term memories become long-term memories. Damage to this region can cause amnesia and prevent the recollection of past experiences. This is the situation Bolzan found himself in and he was diagnosed with a severe case of retrograde amnesia. This condition has been studied and found to have the potential to affect both episodic and semantic memory in varying degrees (Reed & Squire, 1998). Unfortunately, doctors don’t expect Bolzan’s memories to ever return on their own due to the severity of his case. Bolzan, himself, has related his experience to deleting the memory off of a computer. Still, he’s remained optimistic and has written about his journey to relearn the world and create new memories for his new life.

References

Cahalan, S. (2011, September 18). Arizona man wakes from fall to find memory erased. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2011/09/18/arizona-man-wakes-from-fall-to-find-memory-erased/

Reed, J. M., Squire, L. R. (1998). Retrograde amnesia for facts and events: Findings from four new cases. The Journal of Neuroscience, 18(10), 3943–3954. https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.18-10-03943.1998

Woodruff, B., Patria, M. (2010, April 16). Man With Amnesia Lost 46 Years in Workplace Slip. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/amnesia-man-hits-head-loses-memories/story?id=10396719

Since their creation, video games have been associated with several negative concepts: juvenile delinquency, laziness, violence. Over time, however, psychologists have studied this form of entertainment and found that it can be a strong aid to our cognitive processes. Studies have shown that those who play video games even non-regularly often have improved perception, attention levels and reaction times than those who do not. Some of these improvements to cognitive processes are even believed to carry over into real-world tasks unrelated to the game (Boot et al., 2011).

Perception refers to our recognition and interpretation of sensory information. Video games would require a person to use their visual and auditory senses above others. In games where you have to defeat an enemy, the player would have to perceive a threat based on their visual appearance or an auditory cue. Bottom-up processing would occur when our receptors turn the environmental energy into action potential through transduction. The brain would then receive the action potential and we’d react by identifying the enemy in the game. If we’re playing a new game or face an unfamiliar enemy, top-down processing may be involved and we’d rely on our past information and experience to interpret a threat as such. This is a very common scenario in video games and going through it numerous times could certainly improve our perception.

Attention is our ability to control what information we focus on among all that is available in our environment. Just like the real world, video games tend to throw a ton of information at the player at once. Some games require the player to focus on one specific target and even manage several abilities or resources at once. Most video games have a very dynamic environment like this and therefore, I’d say a player’s attention is object-based. They’d need to focus on a specific object among many across the screen. Those unfamiliar with the game could be overwhelmed by this but with experience, it becomes clear where our attention needs to be focused based on the given scenario. 

Psychologists have been using video games to study their effect on these cognitive processes since the 1980s. At that time, they created a video game known as Space Fortress with the purpose of measuring players’ attention, memory and task ability (Boot, 2015). More modern video games, like the ones I described, have expanded on these ideas and now challenge players to strategize while offering numerous paths to success. All games require some perception and attention to be efficient and these cognitive processes are believed to improve in those who play. Some researchers don’t actually believe there’s a large difference in regard to the amount of time a game is played and the effect it has on the player’s cognitive abilities (Boot et al., 2008). It seems even minimal time spent playing games could have a positive effect on a person’s mental abilities.

References

Boot, W. R. (2015). Video games as tools to achieve insight into cognitive processes. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00003

Boot, W. R., Blakely, D. P., Simons, D. J. (2011). Do action video games improve perception and cognition? Frontiers in Psychology, 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00226

Boot, W. R., Kramer, A. F., Simons, D. J., Fabiani, M., Gratton, G. (2008). The effects of video game playing on attention, memory, and executive control. Acta Psychologica, 129(3), 387–398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2008.09.005