Forked Thread: "The Death of the Imagination" re: World of Warcraft

[apoptosis]

i got bored and decided to investigate neural activity during video games and frankly and the studies are very sparse (basically close to nonexistent).

There were 2 studies by Hiraki (adults and children; similar results) that did show that during video game play activity in the dorsal prefrontal cortex (really important to cognition and is activated in highly creative events like jazz improvisation and hypothesis generation as determined by fMRI) was reduced.

What that means...heck, who knows. It was a limited study in regards to number of subjects (but that was really not an issue with this study) and limited amount of study time and the methods were a bit crude to see detailed analysis of different parts of the dPFC (used near IR spec). They didn't do a long enough study to see if chronic play had long term effects.

Most likely the results are due to a goal-achieving activities and visual attention demand (this last point though does go to the idea that internal visual creation probably has different effects than external visual attention).

So take that all for what it is worth. They have been experimenting with new neuroimaging techniques that might have more investigative prowess but that will be awhile before we know much more.

apoptosis

edit..i should add the video games that were played were a shooter game, puzzle game and 2 other sorts and not a online RPG

 

[apoptosis]

Your conjecture is speculative, groundless and, in fact, flies in the face of quite a few studies which conclude that interactive video games are nothing like television in terms of suppressing or altering a human's thought process or brain patterns. See this site, for example, which claims that children's imaginations are in fact stimulated by video games.

Honestly, from my vantage point, that site was not very good and not very convincing. Their works cited page is not good they never referenced peer reviewed studies.

This is not to say that the authors of the site are incorrect and I think they probably have some correct ideas but that they didn't establish a particularly good case.

 

[Matt Black]

Your conjecture is speculative, groundless and, in fact, flies in the face of quite a few studies which conclude that interactive video games are nothing like television in terms of suppressing or altering a human's thought process or brain patterns.

Actually, I find that WoW is worse than television in suppressing my own imagination. The reason is that it sucks me in deeper. Video games may stimulate neural activity, but I find that WoW completely hijacks my creative thought processes. To the point where I have trouble being creative about anything but my current character's build or battleground strategy. Yes, WoW gets my brain working, but it derails my broader imagination and it's hard to break out of that.

The expression "World of Warcrack" is widely used for a reason. Many, many people experience the same thing.

 

[The Little Raven]

Come on, "video games are bad for you" is just "TV rots your brain" for the new century. It's unsupported, and has NEVER been shown to be true. TWENTY YEARS they've been trying to prove it in study after study and not once has it been true.

Less than a century ago, it was "novels will ruin our young." Funny how the boogeyman of yesterday becomes the standard for intellectualism today.

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

Personal anecdotes only...

I've never played WoW. It doesn't appeal to me. I have friends who play it a lot. Does it surpress their imagnation? I don't know. I do know for my firends it is a big time sink and something they think about a lot even when not playing (for example they talk about it at parties or even during 'off spotlight' moments in tabletop RPG sessions. We steer them to another topic, often they come back to WoW later.)

Perhaps that makes them WoW boors, but they obviously like WoW. That's purely up to them. It does have an effect on tabletop play when the DM complains his players are unresponsive/falling asleep during the game due to having been up till 4 AM playing Warcraft.

I suspect it is just the time sink and the focus on the game, even away from the computer, that is likely the cause of possible issues, but I have no proof.

Anything could be a time sink for someone. Regarding activity, TV is probably the "worst" in my own opinon as it is the most passive, in WoW at least you engage with it actively to some degree. Reading is active, you have to pull the words by your own will into your brain and interpret them.

TV is probably the great population pacifier ever invented. In the UK it's even government sponsored.

Yes, I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek with all this, but fun to put down the words.

I will say that I've noticed a number of friends moving off from WoW, getting bored with it, spending more time with tabletop again, so perhaps it's swings & roundabouts?

Just my two-penneth!

 

[apoptosis]

Come on, "video games are bad for you" is just "TV rots your brain" for the new century. It's unsupported, and has NEVER been shown to be true. TWENTY YEARS they've been trying to prove it in study after study and not once has it been true.

This is not actually correct. There have been many studies that have shown that violent video games are associated with increased aggression.

Unfortunately the repeatability of the studies has been an issue. Meta-analyses have also come to disparate conclusions due to publication bias. The most recent meta-analysis did not see significance of the association when controlling for publication bias but that was just the last round of th salvo.

Right now I personally could go either way. My general belief is that individuals with aggressive disposition (genetic, neurochemical or environmental) might have increased aggression upon playing but there might be little effect in individuals who don't have such a predisposition, but that is really just conjecture on my part and not supported by the data one-way or the other.

 

[Desdichado]

Those studies aren't helped by the fact that their bias (or lack thereof, more specifically) seems questionable as well. I've never seen anyone argue one way or another about the issue that didn't have an agenda to push.

 

[apoptosis]

Those studies aren't helped by the fact that their bias (or lack thereof, more specifically) seems questionable as well. I've never seen anyone argue one way or another about the issue that didn't have an agenda to push.

I haven't read most of the studies in depth but I honestly disagree with this point overall. The ones i have read seem pretty upfront and the conclusions that they make are usually pretty conservative.

A lot of the issue is study methodology and subject selection as well as simple statistical artifacts (multiple comparison issues etc.)

I personally have no horse in the race. I believe that the phenomena could be real but am waiting for more data.

I do agree fully though that the people who push the studies (vs the ones who performed and wrote them) have strong agendas and tend to make claims about the studies that the authors and the data do no support. This is also true of news stories which exaggerate the study results.

 

[Desdichado]

The studies themselves are unbiased, but inconclusive it seems.

Everyone that refers to the studies is pounding a pulpit on one side or the other of the issue.

 

[apoptosis]

The studies themselves are unbiased, but inconclusive it seems.

Everyone that refers to the studies is pounding a pulpit on one side or the other of the issue.

That I definitely agree with.