Current Findings
The GTG-Lab is staying busy over the summer gearing up for our NSF grant as well as conducting a number of pilot studies. We will try to keep you up to date with recent findings or important announcements.
- GTG Lab To See If Video Games Can Boost Thinking Skills in Elderly
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
(from NC-State News Service)
Researchers at North Carolina State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have received a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study whether and how video games can boost memory and thinking skills in the elderly – and then to use their findings to develop a prototype video game to do just that.
The researchers will use the grant money, which is part of the federal stimulus package, to fund a two-phase research initiative. In phase one...
read more - Playing Action Video Games is Linked to Better Spatial Ability
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Results from a recent GTG Lab pilot study suggest that young adults who play action video games have better spatial ability than other type of gamers. Specifically, we recorded the types of video games participants played as well as the amount of time played each week. Action video game players performed significantly better than non-players on a measure of spatial ability, F(1, 25) = 11.80, p < .01, and Object Perspective, F(1, 25) = 9.01, p < .01. There was no effect of playing sports, puzzle...
read more - Playing WoW Improves Older Adults' Cognition
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
We recently conducted a pilot study using a sample of 14 older adults (7 men, 7 women) with an average age of 69 years (SD = 4.68; aged 63 to 73 years) all of whom owned their own personal computer. Participants completed a pretesting session that included measures of processing speed, executive functioning, mental rotation, after which they completed a two-hour WoW training session where they learned the basics of WoW game play. Participants were then given a copy of World of Warcraft to...
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