Video Games, Mathematical Problem Solving, and Cross-Platform Learning
Challenges in assessing transfer from burning cupcakes to women in science
1. Challenges in assessing transferfrom burning cupcakes to women in science NSF video game transfer conference October 7-10 2010 Susan M Barnett Cornell University
2. Ceci & Bronfenbrenner (1985) cupcakes study Children bake cupcakes and must keep track of baking time (30 minutes) Distractor task to play PacMan Can’t watch clock whilst playing game so must turn to see clock – experimenter records clock checking surreptitiously One group at home, one in lab No explicit training phase
3. Effect of physical context on clock checking: cupcake baking task From Ceci & Bronfenbrenner (1985)
4. Effect of physical context on clock checking: battery charging task From Ceci & Bronfenbrenner (1985)
5. How and when does transfer happen? Disagreement at the beginning of the 20th century “…every experience has in it the possibilities of generalization” (Judd, 1908) “…there is no inner necessity for improvement of one function to improve others closely similar to it, due to a subtle transfer of practice effect.” (Thorndike and Woodworth, 1901b) …and disagreement at the end “Numerous studies have shown that critical thinking… can be learned in ways that promote transfer to novel contexts.” (Halpern, 1998) “Reviewers are in almost total agreement that little transfer occurs” (Detterman, 1993).
6. Why does it matter? In his classic educational psychology text, Klausmeier (1961) asserted: “A main reason for formal education is to facilitate learning in situations outside school” (p. 352). So, if critics are correct in asserting that transfer very rarely happens, then the justification for educational and training expenditures may need to be reevaluated, as Detterman goes on to urge: “Cognitive psychologists, and other people who should know better, continue to advocate a philosophy of education that is totally lacking in empirical support” (Detterman, 1993, p. 16).
7. Why such profound disagreement? Debate about what counts as transfer For some, only “far” transfer matters, but what counts as far transfer? For some, transfer is only useful if the learner can transfer when they do not realise they are supposed to be doing so. In the real world, no one is going to stand over the learner and point out the connections with their prior learning
8. Some have tried to define transfer “The carrying over of an act or way of acting from one performance to another” (Woodworth & Schlosberg, 1954, p. 734) “The ability to extend what has been learned in one context to new contexts” (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999, p. 39) But there is no clear, agreed-upon definition of what constitutes ‘carrying over’ or ‘a new context’ A lot of the disagreement comes from this – essentially from comparing apples and oranges
9. Specifying dimensions of transfer Specify a framework of relevant dimensions Identify where along these dimensions the pivotal questions regarding the success or failure of transfer lie Map the findings of the conflicting studies against this taxonomic framework
12. Chen & Klahr’s (1999) study of the Control of Variables strategy Teaching elementary school children to design unconfounded tests Short term transfer testing compared different training conditions, but for long term transfer test (discussed here) just compared those exposed to the concepts earlier to new students Children given descriptions of various test combinations (e.g., whether or not a plant got lots of water, food and sunlight) and asked to circle whether a test was a good test or a bad test Tested 7 months later, in a different format, and in a variety of domains
14. Fong, Krantz & Nisbett (1986) study of transfer of statistics coursework to thinking about sports The transfer test was given in the guise of a survey about sports, e.g., “In general, the major league baseball player who wins Rookie of the Year does not perform as well in his second year. This is clear in major league baseball in the past 10 years. In the American League, eight Rookies of the Year have done worse in their second year; only two have done better. In the National League, the Rookie of the Year has done worse the second year 9 times out of 10. Why do you suppose the Rookie of the Year tends not to do as well his second year?” Responses to this regression question were coded for the presence and quality of statistical reasoning. A typical nonstatistical response for this question would be, “The Rookie of the Year doesn’t do as well because he’s resting on his laurels; he’s not trying as hard in his second year.” A good statistical response would be, “A player’s performance varies from year to year. Sometimes you have good years and sometimes you have bad years. The player who won the Rookie-of- the-Year award had an exceptional year. He’ll probably do better than average in his second year, but not as well as he did when he was a rookie.”
16. Context matters – to make sense of studies often need to be conscious of context
17. Application to video game studies – the relationship between 3D mental rotation and women’s presence in STEM fields Casey, Nuttal, & Pezaris (1997, 2001) studied the top third of the US college-bound sample on the SAT math test. The relationship between gender and test scores was explained roughly two-thirds by mental rotation ability Casey and her colleagues have provided evidence of sex differences in 3-D mental rotation among kindergarteners (Casey, Andrews, Schindler, Kersh, & Samper, 2008). Hyde (2005) synthesized 128 effect sizes from 47 published metaanalyses and found somewhat large effects for mental rotation and mechanical reasoning favoring males (d’sbetween 0.56 and .76) Yet, after one semester of computer videogame training (Terlecki & Newcombe, 2005), college women almost caught up with untrained men on mental rotation. And merely playing action video games as part of a experiment can narrow gender differences in mental rotation (Feng et al, 2007)
18. Feng, Spence & Pratt’s (2007) study of video game transfer to spatial tasks Training was playing a 3D first person shooter game (Medal of Honor) for several sessions in the lab Control was playing another 3D computer game that did not involve focussedattenation on a target (a maze puzzle game) Transfer tests were the Uniform Field of View task (UFOV) and an AutoCAD version of the Vandenberg & Kuse (1978) 3D mental rotation tasks.
19. Transfer tests in Feng et al video game study From Feng, Spence & Pratt (2007)
21. So what does this mean? Given the importance placed on 3D mental rotation ability as an explanation for females’ weaker performance on crucial STEM gatekeeper tests such as the SAT-M, is a little video game play all that’s required to remedy years of male-female disparity in spatial skills and STEM careers? It’s important to understand the robustness and transferability of the improvement in 3D mental rotation across different contexts and content dimensions
