1. Dirk A. Kummerle
Technology, Gaming, Cognitive Consequences
Presented May 12, 2013

2. Agenda
Background: Technology Psychology
Social Networking & Human Connectivity
Gaming and Cognition

3. Technology is the basis of a society, and it affects all
civilizations past, present, and future. Technology is like
Newton's third law of motion, "For every action there
is an opposite reaction.”

4. Technology Psychology
Media psychology has become particularly relevant today, created as a
direct response to the explosion of new media since the 1950s. Includes
but is not limited to the psychological study of:
 Media such as the internet, smart phones, television, radio...etc., has
transformed our society, increased productivity and opportunity,
overcome the constraints of geography and changed the way we relate
to media, and to each other.
 Media revolution leaves no industry, career, country, or process
untouched

5. Technology Psychology
Media Psychology is the study of how human behavior, emotions, and
cognitions has and is changing with technology
 Media includes all forms of mediated communications
 Continually changes in response to emerging technologies
 Media psychology is in a unique position to understand how people
interact with media at multiple levels, as producers, as consumers, and
within varied contexts and cultures.
 Provides the tools to understand and promote media technologies that
allow people to thrive, communities to come together, and nations to
communicate.

6. Technology & Society
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
1700 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000
PercentageofPopulation
Technology Reshapes Society
Percent of Agricultur Workers Percent of Industrial Workers
Percent of Information Workers

7. Technology Psychology: Mental Frames
 We take in an enormous amount of information per second., Estimate
about 12 million bits per second (avg. e-mail 30-40 bits)
 In order to deal with these enormous amounts of information we take
in through our senses (eye sight, hearing, and so on) we need some
system to categorize that information, and frames are part of that
system.
 Frames are mental structures that shape what we see, what were
persuaded by, and how we persuade others. Frames also shape
how we see other people – politicians, business
people, friends, partners, and people we have just met.
 This capability our brain has, can also be very dangerous, as in the
case of prejudices, stereotypes, oversimplification, etc. Often people
think that they do not have negative frames or stereotypes.

8. Changing frames means to change our or others' view of the
world, including social, political, business, personal, or educational
issues.
Frames are automatic and often subconscious they are very
powerful. It is very important to know that you cannot simply
negate an existing frame or argue against it, especially not using
the same language that is being used for the undesirable frame
that you want to change.
Facts, are not the answer.
Frames literally filter what we hear or see in terms of facts.
Technology Psychology: Mental Frames

9. Facts, even if true, do not fit somebody's frame they can be ignored.
We are not rational human beings, in fact, we are quite irrational.
Example: Honda vs. Toyota Hybrid:
Honda introduced the Honda Insight, technologically an amazing
but did not sell well. Followed by a series of other hybrids that
looked very similar to regular cars
Toyota realized that eco-conscious consumers do not just act in
an eco-friendly manner because it is and feels good to do so, but
they want others to see that they are eco-conscious. Prius has the
hybrid tag and looked completely different and immediately
recognizable,
Technology Psychology: Mental Frames

10. Society pushes us to invent and innovate new
products every day. We as a society demand
more and better products all the time. Do we
stop to look at the affect this has on us as a
society and a nation? Stop and think about
how technology effects you both positively and
negatively every day? Are much are we
reactionary, or driven by Fear?

11. Fear of Change:
John Phillips Sousa: Lobbied the white House White House to plead his case
against the gramophone. Believed it cause vocal cords to shrivel, and predicted it
would be the end of people gathering to sing.
Plato: Feared that „people will forget how to use their memories if they can write
things down‟
Radio: In the 1930s, Parents were warned that radio would diminish children‟s
performance in school and that the “compelling excitement of the loudspeaker”
would disturb the balance of excitable minds
Television: Predicted to cause the vulgarization of American culture and destroy the
emotional and intellectual capacities of a generation of children.

12. Fear of Change:
CNN: "Email 'hurts IQ more than pot',"
Telegraph: "Twitter and Facebook could harm moral values"
Telegraph: "Facebook and MySpace generation 'cannot form
relationships'
Daily Mail: "How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer."

13. Online Trends
2000
 46% of adults use internet
 5% with broadband at home
 50% own a cell phone
 0% connect to internet wirelessly
 <10% use “cloud”
 = slow, stationary connections built
around my computer
2012
 94% of adults use internet
 62% have broadband at home
 80% own a cell phone
 53% connect to internet
wirelessly
 >two-thirds use “cloud”
 = fast, mobile connections built
around outside servers and
storage

14. The Generation Gap
42% use the Internet to complete their
homework and school assignments
41% of blacks and Hispanics use a
computer at home, compared to 77% of
whites
31% students from families earning less
than $20,000 use computers at
home, compared to 89% of those from
families earning more than $75,000
94%
85%
76% 72%
53%
30%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Millennials
(18-34)
Gen X
(35-46)
Younger
Boomers
(47-56)
Older
Boomers
(57-65)
Silent
Generation
(66-74)
G.I.
Generation
(75+)
Internet use: Generation Gap

15. SMS Text
Messaging 3,417 Text messages exchanged monthly per teen (13-17)
(avg. 7 messages per waking hour)
 Teen girls send and receive an average of 4,050 texts per
month.
 Teen boys send and receive an average of 2,539 texts each
month.
605.00 802.00
3,417.00
1,914.00
928.00
709.00
434.00
167.00
64.00
Male Female 13-17 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+
Average number of text messages exchanged
per month by Age and Gender

16. Technology Trends
Millennials (18-
34)
Gen X (35-
46)
Younger
Boomers
(47-56)
Older Boomers
(57-65)
Silent
Generation (66-
74)
G.I. Generation
(75+)
All online
adults (18+)
Cell phone 94% 89% 86% 77% 70% 41% 83%
Desktop
computer 55% 67% 62% 61% 48% 29% 57%
Laptop computer 70% 63% 58% 49% 32% 14% 56%
iPod or MP3
player 69% 57% 36% 24% 10% 5% 44%
Game console 63% 63% 38% 19% 8% 3% 42%
e-Book reader 12% 14% 14% 12% 6% 5% 12%
Tablet, like iPad 12% 9% 8% 7% 2% 1% 8%

17. Implications
 People are doing more reading and writing now and that has to be better
than the alternative. Participation breeds engagement.
 Reading and writing will be different in 10 years. There will be a new fluidity
in media creation and “screen” literacy will become important.
 The nature of writing has changed now, especially since so much of it takes
place in public. The quality of the new material will get better thanks to
feedback and flamers.
Information can be reached within few clicks
 Technology is breeding change from which we learn
 From our mistakes
 Learning as we go along

18. Impact of Video Games

19. Impact of Video Games
 Game addiction has not yet been officially recognized as a disorder, but studies have found between
5 and 11 percent of children worldwide say gaming are disrupting their lives, suggesting they could
be considered addicted
Violent first person shooter games have the most powerful neurological effects
 Playing violent video games can briefly boost aggressiveness, and regular exposure could cause kids
to be „meaner‟ to one another.
 Even though it's just a game, the body dumps stress hormones into the bloodstream that prepare
to fight lasting ca. 30 minutes
 Regular exposure to violent video accounts for 1 to 4 percent of the many possible triggers for
aggression. (Other predictors range from provocation to poverty and child abuse - protective factors
such as involved parents and good social skills can minimize the problem.
 Gaming could have larger impact on milder forms of aggressiveness (bullying,
yelling…etc)

21. Gamers…
 Teaching is the critical word when it comes to Gaming
 The most consequential conclusion of the research is that video games have a
power few other activities can claim. With practice, a violinist can play a
Mozart string concerto beautifully, but that will not make her better at much
else.
 Gamers, though, do not just learn to be good at shooting. In neurological terms, action games
seem to "retune connectivity across and within different brain areas,"
 That means that gamers "learn to learn." The ability to apply learning to broader tasks is called
transfer, and it is the holy grail of education.

22. Gamers…
First Person Shooting Games can improve visual attention, partcular in terms of attention to
locations in space
 One study compared subjects playing 'Medal of Honor', a first-person shooter set on the battlefield with
nongamers playing Tetris (played 1 hour a day for 10 days).
 Before and after training, both groups took visual attention tests, those who played Medal of Honor
improved in visual and spacial attention, those who played Tetris showed no improvements.
Research has shown improvements among gamers in:
 Sensory processing & visual acuity (a person's ability to see detail)
 Contrast sensitivity (capacity to distinguish different degrees of gray)
 Improved Spacial reasoning (enables us to visualize how objects behave in three-dimensional space)
 Improved hand-eye coordination
 Playing video games might even ameliorate certain visual disorders. In amblyopia, or "lazy eye," blurred or
otherwise poor vision in one eye disrupts neuronal circuits in the visual cortex during development, leaving
one eye underdeveloped. In children, doctors patch the dominant eye to strengthen the weaker eye.

23. Conclusion
 A body of recent research shows that playing certain video games improves
vision, attention, spatial reasoning and decision making.
 More than 90 percent of children play video games, and adults do, too: the average gamer's
age is 33 years.
 The games that have the most powerful neurological effects are the ones parents hate the
most: violent first-person shooters.
 Gamers are better at attention tasks such as visually tracking a friend as he or she weaves
through a crowd of people.
 Video-game players excel at making quick decisions. When they drive, this skill helps them
rapidly assess and react to flashes of light or movement near the vehicle. Is that a child
about to run into the intersection?
 A study of laparoscopic surgeons showed that the number-one predictor of surgical skill was
how well a doctor played video games.

24. Conclusion
 If games improve eyesight and visual attention, researchers considered what other
brain processes they might be able to tweak.
 Ideally, researchers would be able to tease out the beneficial ingredients of these
games to create nonviolent versions that train brains just as effectively. So far
these factors seem to include operating from a first-person point of
view, managing multiple streams of information and goals, and making rapid
decisions.

25. Conclusion
 Technology is everywhere, accept it
 It is a good trend for our society if you follow the ethics
 Be a master of technology but don’t let technology master you

26. References
• Action Video Game Modifies Visual Selective Attention. C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier in Nature, Vol. 423, pages
534-537; May 29, 2003.
• Denworth, L. (2013). Brain-changing games. Scientific American Mind, 23(6), 28-35.
• Video Games and Spatial Cognition. Ian Spence and Jing Feng in Review of General Psychology, Vol. 14. No. 2, pages
92-104; June 2010.
• Children, Wired: For Better and for Worse. Daphne Bavelier, C. Shawn Green and Matthew W. G. Dye in Neuron, Vol.
67, No. 5; September 9, 2010.
• Improved Probabilistic Inference as a General Learning Mechanism with Action Video Games. C. Shawn
Green, Alexandre Pouget and Daphne Bavelier in Current Biology, Vol. 20, No. 17, pages 1573-1579; September
14, 2010.
• The Multiple Dimensions of Video Game Effects. Douglas A. Gentile in Child Development Perspectives, Vol. 5, No.
2, pages 75-81; June 2011.

27. Thank
you!