Academic literature on the topic 'Video game stimulus'

The interest around the utilization of video games as a component of rehabilitative therapy has dramatically increased over the past decade. Research efforts have confirmed the positive effects of repetitive gaming in improving visual outcomes; however, there is limited knowledge on the mechanism of action delivered by repetitive gaming. Utilizing knowledge of the visual system, including targeting specific cells in the retina with visual stimuli, the authors captured the training effects of gaming to augment pre-selected skills. Specifically, the authors embedded a homerun derby style baseball game with a contrast threshold test, to stimulate parvocellular retinal ganglion cells. Parvocellular cells are the first line of the ventral, or “what” pathway of visual processing. Repetitive stimulation of the parvocellular system shows promising preliminary results in improving batting performance.

By utilizing digital tools that are nearly ubiquitous in the lives of youth, writing teachers can leverage these practices for developing traditional English language arts instruction and skills proposed by state and federal standards. In this chapter, the authors propose how the development of computational literacies through multimodal writing and video game design can help guide critical and academic development in an inner-city Los Angeles public school. In a research project where high school youth designed and created (programmed) a video game about an issue significant in their lives, students demonstrated their critical computational literacies, a concept that blends the critical consciousness of critical literacy and the skills and concepts behind computational thinking. Critical computational literacy offers the ability to integrate two seemingly divergent fields. By using these new media tools, students developed a more expansive and sophisticated way to communicate their ideas. This has significant possibilities for the English Language Arts, where most K-12 state standards still relegate students’ literacies to over-indulgence of traditional means of reading and writing of text. In an ever-evolving culture that increasingly places more significance on visual, auditory, and textual stimuli through multimodal media on computers and mobile devices (Hull & Nelson, 2005; Jenkins, 2006; Kress, 2010), schools must educate students to critically “read” messages in the media, and in turn become effective producers of these tools of communication (Alvermann, et al., 1999; Margolis, 2008; Morrell, 2008). This research shows students engaged in deep, reflective processes in the production of their multimodal texts.

By utilizing digital tools that are nearly ubiquitous in the lives of youth, writing teachers can leverage these practices for developing traditional English language arts instruction and skills proposed by state and federal standards. In this chapter, the authors propose how the development of computational literacies through multimodal writing and video game design can help guide critical and academic development in an inner-city Los Angeles public school. In a research project where high school youth designed and created (programmed) a video game about an issue significant in their lives, students demonstrated their critical computational literacies, a concept that blends the critical consciousness of critical literacy and the skills and concepts behind computational thinking. Critical computational literacy offers the ability to integrate two seemingly divergent fields. By using these new media tools, students developed a more expansive and sophisticated way to communicate their ideas. This has significant possibilities for the English Language Arts, where most K-12 state standards still relegate students' literacies to over-indulgence of traditional means of reading and writing of text. In an ever-evolving culture that increasingly places more significance on visual, auditory, and textual stimuli through multimodal media on computers and mobile devices (Hull & Nelson, 2005; Jenkins, 2006; Kress, 2010), schools must educate students to critically “read” messages in the media, and in turn become effective producers of these tools of communication (Alvermann, et al., 1999; Margolis, 2008; Morrell, 2008). This research shows students engaged in deep, reflective processes in the production of their multimodal texts.

You should expect the next great era after ours to be as different from our era as ours is from past eras. In the last few million years, the three biggest changes on Earth were arguably the arrival of humans, the arrival of civilization based on farming, and then civilization based on industry ( Boserup 1981 ; Morris 2015 ). As I’ll discuss more in Chapter 2 , prior Eras section, each of these three eras greatly changed people, society, and the Earth. people who adopted these new ways of life quickly displaced and dominated those who continued with old ways. Compared with primates, wandering human hunter-gatherers greatly expanded technology, art, language, norms, and politics, and displaced many top animal predators. Then farmers and herders stopped wandering, expanded marriage, war, trade, law, class, and religion, and hunted many animals to extinction. Finally, our industrial era has expanded schools, cities, firms, and individual wealth; it has displaced even more of nature and almost all foragers, and it has seen a partial return to forager values. Over this whole period, we’ve seen increases in travel, talk, organization, and specialization. We’ve also had faster change, innovation, and economic growth, and a more integrated and unequal world culture. We have also, I will argue, become increasingly maladaptive. Our age is a “dreamtime” of behavior that is unprecedentedly maladaptive, both biologically and culturally. Farming environments changed faster than genetic selection could adapt, and the industrial world now changes faster than even cultural selection can adapt. Today, our increased wealth buffers us more from our mistakes, and we have only weak defenses against the super-stimuli of modern food, drugs, music, television, video games, and propaganda. The most dramatic demonstration of our maladaptation is the low fertility rate in rich nations today. While the industrial era has deluded many into thinking that old constraints no longer apply, as we will see in Chapter 2, Limits section, many recent constraint-evading trends simply cannot continue forever. Even if our descendants eventually conquer the stars, if we haven’t greatly misunderstood physics then our long-lived but bounded universe must eventually limit innovation and growth. And without strong regulation from a universespanning government, we should eventually see less change, more adaptive behavior, and (perhaps surprisingly) near-subsistence living standards.