Short Term Memory and Dance Dance Revolution
July 7, 2008 6:41 pm NewsCould ExerGaming improve your short-term memory capacity? That is an interesting question posed by Paul Pivec in his poster presented at Ed-Media 2008 last week in Vienna. His preliminary results of testing DDR players with short-term memory tests found that expert DDR players tended to have a higher than average short-term memory capacity. Whilst this is only a statistical association and not cause and effect, it is plausible that playing DDR may have helped develop this enhanced capacity.
So how might playing DDR potentially enhance short-term memory? Consider that in order to play DDR at a high level you need to be able to rapidly process the visual arrow cues and translate these into a sequence of moves. The only way that you can achieve a high step rate is by anticipating the moves a number of steps in advance. That’s where the short term memory comes in. It follows that the greater a player’s short-term memory capacity, the higher number of steps they can anticipate in advance.
You might well ask why this work was being presented at an educational conference? Well, since there is some evidence that short-term memory capacity plays a role in learning, then there may be some scope to improve or even enhance the ability to learn by means of training using an “ExerGame” that relies heavily on short-term memory, as in the case of Dance Dance Revolution.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:10 am
[...] Gamersize Science Online-Lesezeichen zu diesem Beitrag erstellen: Diese Icons verzweigen auf soziale Netzwerke bei [...]
July 9th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
I am part of a team that developed a dance-mat type peripheral that can play thousands of different “casual games. It is the FootPOWR pad. A gamers stands on it and moves feet and body which communicates with the PC controlling mouse and kayboard strokes needed in a casual game. This creates an “exergaming” experience within games that are conventionally played while seated. In your blog this was stated “that in order to play DDR at a high level you need to be able to rapidly process the visual arrow cues and translate these into a sequence of moves.” I have observed similar benefits when one plays games like Bejeweled, Tetris, 3-D Logic, Bookworm Adventure while Footgaming. Could it be the translation of body movement, balance, eye-tracking and the resulting translation that improves memory and/or cognition?
July 11th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
[...] blogger from GamerSizeScience has tried to explain the connection: Consider that in order to play DDR at a high level you need to [...]