Spatial Involvement in Training Mental Rotation with Minecraft

What aspects of gameplay have a positive impact on cognitive development? This work-in-progress focuses on the role of spatial involvement via different control schemes by implementing a training regimen through Minecraft for mental rotation in order to understand the impact of aspects of involvement on the training outcome. A proven engaging training experience was recreated, making training mental rotation more accessible and extending it using digital media. We compare different levels of spatial involvement in a pilot study to understand factors of the experience's impact as a first step towards an improved understanding of relevant aspects of digital games for training.

[1]  I. Cherney.  Mom, Let Me Play More Computer Games: They Improve My Mental Rotation Skills , 2008 .

[2]  Sheryl A. Sorby,et al.  The Development and Assessment of a Course for Enhancing the 3‐D Spatial Visualization Skills of First Year Engineering Students , 2000 .

[3]  Ahmad Rafi,et al.  Practising mental rotation using interactive Desktop Mental Rotation Trainer (iDeMRT) , 2009, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[4]  A. Neubauer,et al.  Two- vs. three-dimensional presentation of mental rotation tasks: Sex differences and effects of training on performance and brain activation , 2010, Intelligence.

[5]  Teena Willoughby,et al.  Do Video Games Promote Positive Youth Development? , 2013 .

[6]  Cheryl K. Olson.  Children's Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development , 2010 .

[7]  Irina Verenikina.  ‘Digital play’ is here to stay … but don’t let go of real Lego yet , 2014 .

[8]  N. Newcombe,et al.  How Important Is the Digital Divide? The Relation of Computer and Videogame Usage to Gender Differences in Mental Rotation Ability , 2005 .

[9]  Juanita V. Copley,et al.  The Development of Spatial Skills Through Interventions Involving Block Building Activities , 2008 .

[10]  I. Spence,et al.  Video Games and Spatial Cognition , 2010 .

[11]  Michael Eid,et al.  Quantitative and Qualitative Change in Children's Mental Rotation Performance. , 2008 .

[12]  Andrew K. Przybylski,et al.  A Motivational Model of Video Game Engagement , 2010 .

[13]  N. Jausovec,et al.  Sex differences in mental rotation and cortical activation patterns: Can training change them? , 2012 .

[14]  R. de Lisi,et al.  Improving Children's Mental Rotation Accuracy With Computer Game Playing , 2002, The Journal of genetic psychology.

[15]  Manuel Contero,et al.  Virtual Blocks: a serious game for spatial ability improvement on mobile devices , 2014, Multimedia Tools and Applications.

[16]  G. Calleja.  In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation , 2011 .