PLAYING 3D VIDEO GAME REDUCES GENDER DIFFERENCE IN A COGNITIVE TASK Sushil Chandra, Kanishka Sharma, Greeshma Sharma, Neelam Sharma Bio Medical Engineering Department, INMAS-DRDO, Delhi E-mail:
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Abstract: Experience of action video game is invariably growing in our day today life. This experiment reviews about the gender base performance of a cognitive skill among regular video game players and non-regular video game players on the basis of psycho-physiological test. Regular and continuous video game players often outperform non-players on measure of basic cognitive ability such as Motor Speed. Such differences might result from exposure to 3D video games between those people who do or do not play video games. There is a casual relationship between playing action video games and improvements in a cognitive skill. In this experiment, EEG was recorded before and after psychological testing of video game players. There by improving their ability to cope with the daily-life situations. The results suggest that Action 3D video game alter the performance in task of cognitive ability and reduces gander difference.
Cognition can be defined as the processes an organism uses to organize information. This includes acquiring information (perception), selecting (attention), representing (understanding) and retaining (memory) information, and using it to guide behaviour (reasoning and coordination of motor outputs). Cognitive enhancement may be defined as the amplification or extension of core capacities of the mind through improvement or augmentation of internal or external information processing systems. Studies suggests that playing video games, even for a relatively short period of time, improves performance on a number of tasks that measure cognitive abilities such as attentiveness, determination, memorizing the things, reaction time and motor speed etc. Participants play action video games for as 10 hours can improve performance on laboratory tasks.
taking prescription drugs. The objective of the experiment was explained to all the subjects. Participants were considered experts if they played seven or more hours of video games per week for the past two years. Non regular VGP were selected such that they played video games one hour a week or less. The whole experiment procedure is divided in two parts- (a) EEG recording (Pre and Post) and (b) Psychological test monitoring (Pre and Post). The Experimental Group went through a Pre Testing and then through Post Testing after a span of 2 months in which they played 3D video games (Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2) while the Control Group went through the Pre Testing and then through Post Testing after a span of 1 month. Subjects were performed finger tapping task in PEBL (Psychology Experiment Building Language) software. The psychological testing was done along with EEG recording through EMOTIV EPOC. The duration of psychological testing was about ½ hours.
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INTRODUCTION
METHODOLOGY
Total 20 subjects, 10 male and 10 female (1824 ages) were selected from INMAS-DRDO, Delhi for experiment and divided into two equal groups, Experimental group (Regular VGP) and Control (Non regular VGP) group. All subjects were signed the consent form and no subjects had any medical illness, brain injury, psychiatric or cardiac history or were
EEG SIGNAL PROCESSING
Pre-processing of EEG raw signal was done by applying digital Filters and independent component analysis (ICA) using EEGLAB toolbox. And Wavelet toolbox of matlab software was used for feature extraction and calculation of power spectral density of EEG signal bands. Theta (4-8 Hz), Alpha (8-13Hz) and Beta (13-25 Hz) bands were extracted.
SPSS statistics, toolbox used for statistical analysis of the results. The results will be “significant” on the basis of value of P (Sig. (2-tailed)). The ideal value of P occurs P=0.05. If value is less than 0.05, it is significant. 4.
RESULTS
Fig.1. Variation in graph of finger tapping task for Control group alpha and beta during Pre and Post testing. For finger tapping task 4 channels (FC5, T7, T8 and FC6) of the sub bands are selected out of 14 channels. A wide range of sensory, motor, and cognitive tasks have been demonstrated to induce responses in EEG or magneto-encephalography (MEG) as local decreases of alpha (8–13 Hz) and beta (13–30 Hz) band power (Babiloni et al., 1999). In control group- female shows decrease in alpha and beta power. While male shows slightly increase in alpha and decrease in beta power.
Fig.2. Variation in graph of finger tapping task for Experimental group alpha and beta during Pre and Post testing. In experimental group, female shows decrease in alpha and match with value of male. Similarly beta decrease and match with male beta value. While male also shows decrease in alpha and beta power. This test is significant by t-test. According to psychological testing result RT must be reduce in post testing. In control group, both male and female has reduce RT and there is more difference between them. In experimental group, female RT is reduced and post value found near to male post value. While in male slightly increase in RT found.
Fig.3. Variation in graph of FT task for Control group RT during Pre and Post testing
Fig.4. Variation in graph of FT task for Experimental group RT during Pre and Post testing 5.
DISCUSSION
All subjects perform better and sincerely during gaming and testing period. All young male and young female appear to be equally motivated by desire for inclusion, affection and control during gaming. But, performances of female were unexpectedly better than male. From the above experiment it can be concluded that video game players showed smaller switching costs i.e. greater cognitive flexibility than non-video game players. Findings support the idea that playing first person shooter games promotes positive effects on cognitive health with better psychomotor performance. And cognitive gap between male and female can be reducing by greater gaming experience. For future studies, Specific benefits of video game play are improved hand-eye coordination in surgeons to vision changes that boost night driving ability. Although gaming is a good mental exercise, but sitting in front of the computer does not serve for better nutrition and physical health. Also excessive playing of game causes negative effect. REFERENCES 1.
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Feng, J., Spence, I., & Pratt, J. Playing an action video game reduces gender differences in spatial cognition. Psychological Science, 18(2007), 850– 855. Babiloni C, Carducci F, Cincotti F, Rossini PM, Neuper C, Pfurtscheller G, Babiloni F. Human movement-related potentials vs desynchronization of EEG alpha rhythm: a high resolution EEG study. Neuroimage, 10(1999), 658–665.
