Field Test of Video Game Trainer

Abstract

A field study was conducted at the US Army Aviation Center to determine whether workload-coping and attention-management skills developed through structured video game experience would generalize to flight training. Three groups of 24 trainees were compared: (1) One received 10 hours of training on an IBM-PC version of Space Fortress, replicating an earlier study; (2) The second played a commerical video game (Apache Strike) for 10 hours which also required tracking, monitoring, situation assessment, and memory; (3) The third matched group receive no game training. Flight school records were monitored during the next 18 mos to compare performance of the three groups during initial flight training. Check ride ratings began to show an advantage for the group trained with Space Fortress by the Instrument stage of training, as predicted. Furthermore, attrition rates were lower for this group, replicating the results of an earlier study conducted by Gopher (1990) in the Israeli Air Force Flight School.