Five hours of Tetris play improved some mental rotation measures but not most spatial skill measures¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r? · q2
Currency · newest study 2014 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Students required to play Tetris for five hours showed greater pretest-to-posttest gains in some measures of mental rotation than non-playing students, with no differences on most spatial skill measures. → Mayer 2014

Evidence¶

Mayer 2014¶

Mayer, Richard E. (2014). Computer Games for Learning: An Evidence-Based Approach. The MIT Press. http://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/4028/bookpreview-pdf/2362507

q2 · i? · causal · r?

Cognitive consequences study from the author's lab comparing pretest-to-posttest change for students required to play Tetris for five hours against students who did not play. Gains appeared in "some measures of mental rotation" but not on most spatial skill measures. No effect sizes are printed in the text.

"students who were required to play the classic video game Tetris for five hours showed greater pretest-to-posttest gains in some measures of mental rotation than did students who did not play the game but no differences on most spatial skill measures"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The spatial curriculum produced near transfer to improved spatial scanning and increased self-reported spatial habits of mind, but not to mental rotation — related
• Spatial Training Improves Math Performance — a broader claim this one bears on
• Effects of two-dimensional mental rotation training on children's mathematics performance are mixed, with significant correlations between rotation and mathematics measures — related
• Spatial ability correlates with educational performance across many STEM disciplines and sub-disciplines — related
• Tetris cognitive gains mostly appear on tests resembling the game itself, with training studies finding no gains on general cognitive tasks — related