Increased perceptual fidelity fails to reliably improve serious game learning outcomes (the fidelity fallacy)¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2026 · checked against its sources 2026-10-18 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Empirical evidence shows that increased fidelity (visual realism and immersion) does not reliably improve learning or training outcomes in serious games, and in some cases increases extraneous cognitive load without proportional learning benefit. → Tripathi 2026

Evidence¶

Tripathi 2026¶

Tripathi, P., & Kapralos, B. (2026). AI-Enabled Serious Games: Integrating Intelligence and Adaptivity in Training Systems. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21962. doi:10.48550/arxiv.2605.21962

q2 · i? · review · r2

The chapter reports, citing prior systematic reviews, that the assumption that more realistic environments would improve training effectiveness was contradicted by empirical evidence. In some cases higher fidelity "increase[s] extraneous cognitive load... without proportional learning benefit while escalating development costs."

"However, empirical evidence contradicted this assumption and has shown that increased fidelity (sometimes called the fidelity fallacy) fails to reliably improve learning outcomes [42]."

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Does more perceptual fidelity or immersion improve learning from a simulation? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 4 narrower claims that bear on it: 5 distinct studies (2 causal, 1 review, 1 theoretical, 1 quant-synthesis), q1–q3, 1 of 5 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

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