Will video games solve sex-discrimination in science? : Cognitive Daily
Will video games solve sex-discrimination in science? : Cognitive Daily
I love the hostility between nature/nurture groups. Some thoughts that seem trivially obvious and may be drastically oversimplified:
If you never *perform* visio-spatially challenging activities, you'll never *improve* them. Cultures that choose to avoid these activities (e.g. sports, video-games, logic puzzles, etc.) will suck ass relative to those who do practice spatial manipulation .
The result: some culturally created performance differences. Why does this threaten people Why do they get so angry It's as if some people need to feel inherently superior at some level, or else they blow up in a rage.
This doesn't mean that biological differences do not dramatially affect ability - of course they do. Just compare a born genius's scores with a regular joe's. And males, selected for superior survival skills - some of which would tax visio-spatial ability - could definitely inherit a strong advantage. But I think there is also a tendency to imagine that females never needed or used these same skills, and to exaggerate the role they played in male development, and also to ignore the deceptively minor effects of sport and play.
Nature and nurture: There's a balance some where, different for each individual, and I don't expect it will be solved for anytime soon.
"Finally, I'd be interested to know if there are any games out there that improve visuospatial skills without all that violence. "
Yes there are some, there's a game called 'Portal' that uses a first person action perspective to create an intriguing puzzle game. It's excellently written, and the protagonist is even female.
I play a lot of multiplayer action games online, and although the subject matter is shooting, I prefer to think of it as a sport. In the best games, and at the higher levels of playing them, it feels much more like that than a war anyway.
Also, the reason so many games are about war is that they are playing to their demographic of boys and young men. If women start buying games in large enough numbers they will start making the kind of games that they want to play. Supply and demand can be a powerful thing.
I agree that there are differences between males and females in certain domains such as math and spatial abilities and these differences result in an apparent female underrepresentation as well as a male bias in the sciences. However, every indication seems to be that most of the differences can be overcome. We are currently doing some VR spatial research and there does not appear to be any gender differences in ability or in the learning curves.
Additionally, compared to the literature of the 1960's, the current "social and cultural influences on sex and math/science" may be a bit of a misnomer. Consider the list of items previously posted as influences. daenku32 |
It's always good to hear from other lady gamers. :) I've been into it since I was about 7 or 8 and I wouldn't say I have stellar math skills, although I did enjoy calculus a great deal. When I was a kid I had to play nice with some realllllly annoying, sexist little boy-pigs to get my hands on certain games and consoles, but it was SO worth it. I love everything, really-- the MMO's, RTS's, Resident Evils, Descent, RPGs like Torment, Tekken-type stuff, simple hidden object games like Madame Fate (creepy carnies + bad puns = love). But my favourite genre by far is the Craptastic Bargain Bin RPG PC Game. Best three bucks you ever spent. :)
On the subject of games that test spatial skills, is anyone else obsessed with FoldIt right now I worked an 11-hour day yesterday, came home and ended up spending another 6 manipulating some ungodly globular protein...
Does the paper explicitely says that this progress concerns only action games
Based on your article I would think it's mainly the point of view (First Person Shooter) that improve this aptitude and not the type of game. A game like Portal could have the same result without the violence (the involve also some twisted portal gameplay).
Usually women have more difficulty with game involving an immersion in a 3D world and are more confortable with 2D games or game with a single viewpoint (even with 3D graphics).
Link to portal: SocraticGadfly |