A Study on Whether Digital Games can Effect Spatial Reasoning Skills

Abstract

This chapter explores the use of a set of 2D recreational puzzle games for training basic spatial skills such as tilting, rotating and flipping. An experiment was carried out with twenty-four human subjects. Initially, the subjects’ spatial capabilities were assessed by having them play two games which require spatial manipulations and reasoning. Following this initial assessment, subjects were split into three groups. The members of group 1 acted as the control group and were not required to practice on any spatial tasks. The individuals in group 2 and 3 were instead invited to take part in a training phase where they had to play with a set of math puzzle games of varying difficulties. Members of group 2 played the games by carrying out spatial instructions as imparted by a research assistant. Members of group 3 played the games individually and without any restrictions. The subjects of group 2 and 3 are referred to as trained subjects and executor subjects, respectively. By the end of training, all subjects were asked to repeat the initial assessment procedure in a control session. The comparison of the data collected during the control session with that collected during the initial assessment, indicates that both trained players and executors performed much better in terms of spatial capabilities than the subjects in the control group. Specifically, trained players and executors made fewer spatial manipulative errors and successfully completed spatial tasks faster than their peers in the control group.