"Smart Play"

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Overview

In 2013, I worked at Drexel's CONQUER Lab, which focused on studying brain activity and function. 

My project "Smart Play," was done in accordance with the CONQUER Lab and my high school. With the help of my mentor, Hasan Ayaz, I wanted to understand the correlation between video gaming and cognitive brain activity. This is a project idea that I had because many high school students  constantly play games on their phones, computers etc. Hence, I wanted to see if that was beneficial or detrimental to their cognitive abilities.

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Choosing Subjects

10 subjects volunteered to participate randomly from high school. The subjects would be asked to play a online game for at least 30 minutes a day for three weeks.The experiment required half of the population to play a strategy game, while the other half played a less stimulating game.

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Pre-Game

In order to determine whether a person's brain activity improved with gaming, I had to find a platform to test their cognitive skills before and after they played the game. I used Tangram,  a small puzzle game with 7 pieces, which together form a picture when placed in the correct orientation and position. 

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Picking the right game

I did feasibility testing on various games to see how they used used spatial cognition, memory, problem solving. It was also important to ensure the game was fun to play, so subjects would like playing the game longer. I found a  game called, Continuity, an innovative sliding-tile puzzle platform game, where players can jump from card to card, collect the keys and lock the door.

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Tracking Performance

I embedded this game into a website I designed, which could track frequency and duration subject would play the game.  I suggested they play for at least 30 minutes per day for three weeks, but they were encouraged to play longer!

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Post-Game

After 3 weeks, the subjects were then given more Tangram puzzles to solve. The pre-game to post-game performance change would indicate if there was a positive correlation between gaming and cognitive function.

 

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Results

Results showed that there was an improvement in both time of solving Tangram puzzles as well as reduced amount of moves needed to solve puzzle for those who played the strategy game as compared to the subjects who played the "fun" game. Therefore, the experiment was able to demonstrate a positive correlation between strategy gaming on brain activity. 

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Challenges 

There were many challenges along the way that had to be overcome such as finding students from school to participate in this study. I had to create the incentive of community service and had to market on many social media platforms.  I also never created my own website, so that had  a learning curve. Finally, it was a solo project, with only some guidance from my research mentor, so figuring out the steps to take for everything and how to analyze the results were some hurdles. 
 

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