Reward, learning and games

Learning Landscape in Gamification: The Need for a Methodological Protocol in Research Applications

In education, the term "gamification" refers to of the use of game-design elements and gaming experiences in the learning processes to enhance learners' motivation and engagement. Despite researchers' efforts to evaluate the impact of gamification in educational settings, several methodological drawbacks are still present. Indeed, the number of studies with high methodological rigor is reduced and, consequently, so are the reliability of results. In this work, we identified the key concepts explaining the methodological issues in the use of gamification in learning and education, and we exploited the controverses identified in the extant literature. Our final goal was to set up a checklist protocol that will facilitate the design of more rigorous studies in the gamified-learning framework. The checklist suggests potential moderators explaining the link between gamification, learning, and education identified by recent reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses: study design, theory foundations, personalization, motivation and engagement, game elements, game design, and learning outcomes.

Effects of social and nonsocial reward on executive function in preschoolers

INTRODUCTION

Executive function, a set of higher order cognitive skills underlying goal-directed behaviors, develops rapidly during preschool years. Reward increases executive function engagement in adolescents and adults. However, there is still a scarcity of data on how reward affects executive function in young children. The present study examines whether different incentive types contribute differently to executive function performance and neural activity in children.

METHODS

Twenty-five preschoolers of 5-6 years old were provided an incentive Go/No-go task, comparing social, nonsocial, and nonreward conditions. Activations in the prefrontal regions during the tasks were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

RESULTS

The results revealed that social reward enhanced right prefrontal activations in young children. In contrast to adult literature, younger children did not show any significant differences in executive function performance across conditions.

CONCLUSION

This study expands our understanding of motivation and EF engagement in preschoolers. Specifically, social reward enhanced prefrontal activations in young children. The implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Habits and Attitudes of Video Gaming and Information Technology Use in People with Schizophrenia: Cross-Sectional Survey

Background

Information technology and video gaming have potential advantages in the treatment of schizophrenia. However, information regarding the habits and attitudes related to internet use and video gaming in people with schizophrenia is limited.

Objective

The aim of this study was to explore the habits and attitudes regarding video gaming and information technology usage and their associated factors in people with schizophrenia in Hong Kong.

Methods

In this cross-sectional survey, service users with schizophrenia were recruited from 6 halfway hostels and 7 integrated centers for mental wellness in Hong Kong. A 79-item self-report questionnaire was utilized to explore the habits of internet use and video gaming in these people with schizophrenia. The attitude toward video gaming was assessed using the Gaming Attitudes, Motivations, and Experiences Scales. Of the 148 individuals in a convenience sample who were invited to participate in this study, 110 willingly participated (a response rate of 74.3%). The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, a two-tailed independent t test, Pearson correlation, and principal analysis with 3 methods of rotation (varimax, equimax, and promax).

Results

Most participants (100/110, 90.9%) had access to the internet and half of them (54/110, 49.1%) used the internet daily mostly to watch videos (66/110, 60.0%) or read news or books, etc (42/110, 38.2%). One-third of the participants (36/110, 32.7%) used the internet to play web-based games, and most of them (88/110, 80.0%) had played a video game in the past year. The most favorable gaming platforms were cellular phones (43/88, 49%) followed by computers (19/88, 22%) and arcade cabinets (6/88, 7%). The most favorable game genre was action games (34/145, 23.4%). Those who had a bachelor’s degree or higher scored lower in social interaction than those with a lower education level (P=.03). Those who played video games daily scored higher in the category of story than those who did not play daily (t₈₆=2.03, P=.05). The most popular gaming category was autonomy and the least popular categories were violent catharsis and violent reward. Two motives, “social playing” and “evasive playing,” were formed to describe the characteristics of playing video games.

Conclusions

Our data showed a high internet utilization rate among people with schizophrenia in Hong Kong. Only a few of them used the internet to search for health-related information. Our study also exemplified the unique habits of gaming among the participants. Health care professionals could utilize video games to engage people with schizophrenia and promote coping with stress and provide social skills training to such people with schizophrenia. Identification of the gaming attitudes can contribute to the development of serious games for the schizophrenic population. Further investigation is vital for the promotion of mental health through web-based platforms.

Annual Research Review: Educational neuroscience: progress and prospects

Educational neuroscience is an interdisciplinary research field that seeks to translate research findings on neural mechanisms of learning to educational practice and policy and to understand the effects of education on the brain. Neuroscience and education can interact directly, by virtue of considering the brain as a biological organ that needs to be in the optimal condition to learn ('brain health'); or indirectly, as neuroscience shapes psychological theory and psychology influences education. In this article, we trace the origins of educational neuroscience, its main areas of research activity and the principal challenges it faces as a translational field. We consider how a pure psychology approach that ignores neuroscience is at risk of being misleading for educators. We address the major criticisms of the field comprising, respectively, a priori arguments against the relevance of neuroscience to education, reservations with the current practical operation of the field, and doubts about the viability of neuroscience methods for diagnosing disorders or predicting individual differences. We consider future prospects of the field and ethical issues it raises. Finally, we discuss the challenge of responding to the (welcome) desire of education policymakers to include neuroscience evidence in their policymaking, while ensuring recommendations do not exceed the limitations of current basic science.

Reward-enhanced encoding improves relearning of forgotten associations

Research on human memory has shown that monetary incentives can enhance hippocampal memory consolidation and thereby protect memory traces from forgetting. However, it is not known whether initial reward may facilitate the recovery of already forgotten memories weeks after learning. Here, we investigated the influence of monetary reward on later relearning. Nineteen healthy human participants learned object-location associations, for half of which we offered money. Six weeks later, most of these associations had been forgotten as measured by a test of declarative memory. Yet, relearning in the absence of any reward was faster for the originally rewarded associations. Thus, associative memories encoded in a state of monetary reward motivation may persist in a latent form despite the failure to retrieve them explicitly. Alternatively, such facilitation could be analogous to the renewal effect observed in animal conditioning, whereby a reward-associated cue can reinstate anticipatory arousal, which would in turn modulate relearning. This finding has important implications for learning and education, suggesting that even when learned information is no longer accessible via explicit retrieval, the enduring effects of a past prospect of reward could facilitate its recovery.

Signed reward prediction errors drive declarative learning

Reward prediction errors (RPEs) are thought to drive learning. This has been established in procedural learning (e.g., classical and operant conditioning). However, empirical evidence on whether RPEs drive declarative learning-a quintessentially human form of learning-remains surprisingly absent. We therefore coupled RPEs to the acquisition of Dutch-Swahili word pairs in a declarative learning paradigm. Signed RPEs (SRPEs; "better-than-expected" signals) during declarative learning improved recognition in a follow-up test, with increasingly positive RPEs leading to better recognition. In addition, classic declarative memory mechanisms such as time-on-task failed to explain recognition performance. The beneficial effect of SRPEs on recognition was subsequently affirmed in a replication study with visual stimuli.

Language Learning Enhanced by Massive Multiple Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) and the Underlying Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms

Massive Multiple Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) have increased in popularity among children, juveniles, and adults since MMORPGs' appearance in this digital age. MMORPGs can be applied to enhancing language learning, which is drawing researchers' attention from different fields and many studies have validated MMORPGs' positive effect on language learning. However, there are few studies on the underlying behavioral or neural mechanism of such effect. This paper reviews the educational application of the MMORPGs based on relevant macroscopic and microscopic studies, showing that gamers' overall language proficiency or some specific language skills can be enhanced by real-time online interaction with peers and game narratives or instructions embedded in the MMORPGs. Mechanisms underlying the educational assistant role of MMORPGs in second language learning are discussed from both behavioral and neural perspectives. We suggest that attentional bias makes gamers/learners allocate more cognitive resources toward task-related stimuli in a controlled or an automatic way. Moreover, with a moderating role played by activation of reward circuit, playing the MMORPGs may strengthen or increase functional connectivity from seed regions such as left anterior insular/frontal operculum (AI/FO) and visual word form area to other language-related brain areas.