Explanation-Based Learning

Daphne Bavelier is an Associate Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester, NY, and the Co-Director of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging. She combines behavioral and brain imaging approaches to study how humans learn and adapt to changes in experience, whether induced by nature (deafness) or training (playing video games). daphne@cvs.rochester.edu C. Shawn Green is currently a Post-Doctoral Associate in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Cognitive Sciences at the University of Minnesota working with Daniel Kersten and Paul Schrater. His research interests include perceptual learning, and in particular the study of factors that control the rate, extent. and generality of learning, as well as decision-making. csgreen@umn.edu Green and Bavelier documented the powerful effect of action-video game playing on visual attention in 2003, and have collaborated since on the effects of gaming on perception and cognition as well as on the components that promote learning in a video game experience. This work has been supported by the National Eye Institute, the Office of Naval Research, and the James S. McDonnell Foundation. that video game use cuts widely across both gender and age gro ups.ln fact , accord ing to the Enterta inment Software Association, in the United States the average video game player's age is 35 and 40% of all game players are women. The number of gamers is likely to continue to grow as game designers strive to capture a larger market share. Extensive video game play, in some respect, constitutes a natural experiment in which individuals expose themselves to an abnormal sensory and cognitive environment. In our research we seek to evaluate exactly how gaming alters perceptual and cognitive processing as well as the neural mechan isms underlying these behavioral changes. The first notable finding from our work is tl1at the nature of the perceptual and/or cognitive changes that occur as a resu lt of video game experience is highly dependent on the type of games that are played. The largest observed effects on perception, attention, and processing speed ar ise speci fically from 'action' video game play. Action video games are a particular subset of games in which many qu ickly moving or highly transien t objects are present. They requi.re flexible allocation of resources to efficiently monitor the entire visual scene fo r unexpected events, and demand extremely fast action selection. While games from a variety of genres may be considered action games, the primary examples are firstand thirdperson shooters, such as Halo or Gears of War. Our research shows that ind ividuals trained on such games perform better in a variety of perceptual, attentional, and cognitive tasks than individuals trained on other types of similarly engrossing, but 'non-action' games. More explicitly, the skills enhanced by action video game training include low-level vision (enhanced contrast sensitivity funct ion), va rious aspects of attention (ability to monitor several objects at once, to search through a clu ttered scene, to detect an event of in terest in a fast-forwarding video), more complex task constructs (multi-tasking, taskswitching) and fina lly a general speeding of perceptual processing. Our work iLlustrates how skilled performance in a variety of processing domains can be enhanced by a single training regimen, a finding that has d irect practical implications fo r job-related training (e.g., laparoscopic surgeons and cl inical rehabilitation). Significantly, skills improved by the regimen extend well beyond specific tasks required in the games. A training regimen whose benefits are so b road is unprecedented and provides a unique oppo rtunity to identify factors that underlie learni ng in general, and more specifically, factors that promote the transfer of skills to new tasks or new domains. A multi -disciplinary and multi -un iversity effort is under way investiga ting just these factors (see www.bcs. rochester.edu/muri/index.htm l). Our core hypothesis is that b road learning requires a training regimen that (i) increases processing speed, (ii ) enhances the flexibility with which executive resources a re allocated and (iii) has a high degree of flow or sense of enjoyment, engagement, and task mastery from gain ing expertise in a given task. On-going work is investigating the neura l basis of changes induced by action video game training, and will compare these changes with any that occur as a result of experience with games specifically designed to augmen t cogn itive func tioning. An importan t direction for future research is to add ress how video games can best be used to foster content-based learning. Our results show that there is more than meets the eye when designi11g a training game. W hi le there is obviously virtue in applying principles derived from classroom teaching, it should not preclude the exploitation of gaming technology for the unique experience it offers. A