Work in Progress

Emotion, ambiguity and telling stories: The role of neuroscience in using computer games for learning
Phil Marston

T IS OVER half-a-century since the power of computer games to train and educate was first identified (Mood & Spect, 1954), yet today it is still not clear what it is about computer games that make them powerful tools for learning or how best to use them. While the early interest was with the military application of games and simulations, the advent of personal computing in the seventies caught the attention of theorists interested in the development of educational software for a wider audience (Ito, 2009). These early educational software developers were inclined towards a progressive model of child development (SuttonSmith, 1997), in line with a Piagetian view, where practice of skills was the emphasis. Indeed, the perception of a close relationship between play and skill development can be traced back to biological models put forward by Groos in 1898. It could be said that we can see little change in approach, when we look at the focus on progressive skill development and the assessment and ranking of such in todays formal educational systems. The progressive development approach, however, has provided difficulties for the successful use of computer games in education, because neither the games nor the players in the context of game play, sit easily in this model. It is an attempt to understand this problem that seems to provide the primary focus of research into the use of computer games in an educational setting (Egenfeldt-Neilson, 2005; Ito, 2009; Squire, 2004).

Emotion
While much of the research has been focused on the affordances of computer games and the development of effective pedagogies, more recently we have seen enquiries in to the psychology of computer gaming outwith formal educational systems. James Paul Gees seminal work What Computer Games Teach us about Learning and Literacy (2007) has shed new light on the dynamic between a computer game and the learning of the player. Conducting a close semiotic analysis of what it is to play computer games, Gee has drawn our attention to aspects of learning not conventionally considered in the discourse on the role of play in child development (Sutton-Smith, 1997). A striking area of interest is the role of emotion in rational thinking (Gee, 2008). It has been known for some time that both high and low emotional states can negatively impact thinking (Yearks & Dodson, 1908). More recently Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 1996) has reframed this effect as the need to find a balance between boredom and challenge to find an optimum state that he calls flow. At the same time the neuroscientist Damasio (1994) has demonstrated that there is an intimate relationship between emotion and reason. While it may be intuitive to recognise that learning is effected by high or low emotional states, other studies in neurophysiology are starting to indicate that there might be a much more fundamental relationship between emotion, play and learning.

16

The Psychology of Education Review, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2011 The British Psychological Society ISSN 0262-4087

Emotion, ambiguity and telling stories

Pellis and Pellis (2009) have carried out research that seems to complement that of Damasio, showing the importance of emotion. In studies of play behaviour in rats over the last 30 years, Pellis and Pellis have found that the motivation to play is as deep seated in some lineages of animals as the motivation to reproduce or eat. Examining play as something that provides a functional advantage in evolutionary terms, they have identified its importance in the development of the regulation of emotion in novel situations. It would appear that this is one of the most important evolutionary advantages play offers. Put simply, play practice provides an animal with the emotional repertoire to deal with the unexpected. Something that is most advantageous to free ranging social animals such as humans.

Telling stories
The ability to abstract from the real world also seems to be something that may have developed, if not primarily to serve the imagination and play, at least as a co-opted faculty that has been much enhanced by its use in conjunction with play. Our major means of abstraction is to use symbols and words to stand for other things. An important distinction between animal play and human play is that animal play generally involves contact, where as human play can make extensive use of our language abilities. While an obvious example of this is humour, where the ambiguous use of words and situations for fun seems directly analogous to play, it would also seem likely that storytelling is closely related to abstraction and imaginative construction of alternative realities to explore ambiguity. A more recent use of computer games in education is as a form of text. Media studies provides a curriculum for students to explore understanding of their environment through the understanding of the media they consume (books, comics, TV, movies and computer games). In this way all media is seen as a form of text to be read. In this form of the reading of computer games there seems to be two approaches, either an analysis of narrative or an analysis of play and sometimes both. Explorations of the reading of computer games as narrative are providing scholars with some hitherto unconsidered insights into what narrative can be. The fact that games are participatory and may follow different trajectories on different occasions brings in to sharp focus notions of coauthorship and cocreation (Gee, 2008) of the text. While this is not unlike the literary analysis in terms of readerly or writerly texts offered by Barthes (1977), which was open to disagreement, an analysis framed in terms of cocreation seems inescapable when considering computer games, due to their intrinsically participative nature. Given that imaginative story construction seems such a core part of the play of children, it is not hard to see that this feature 17

Ambiguity
Many authors have identified the ambiguous nature of play as one of its primary features (Huizinga, 1938/1949; Caillois, 1958/1961; Sutton-Smith 1997). Human play, when examined from the perspective of it being a drive to experience the unexpected, might provide new insights into the ways computer games can be more successfully designed and used for learning. This might help explain some of the problematic issues around student autonomy that researchers found when exploring the use of computer games in educational settings (Egenfeldt-Neilson, 2005; Ito, 2009; Squire, 2004). If the purpose of playing is to confront the unexpected, then it is likely to be an almost entirely personal experience, subjectively framed to suit the player (even when group play is involved) and quite at odds with traditional educational curricula. Given the apparent importance of play for survival, and the limited opportunities to experience a significant number of ambiguous situations in a humans early years, it also seems reasonable to conjecture that human imagination might have developed to conjure more sophisticated ambiguities to play with. As Vygotsky (1967/2004) illustrates, there does seem to be a close relationship between play, imagination and creativity.

The Psychology of Education Review, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2011

Phil Marston

of computer games may be part of their engaging attraction. If imaginative story construction is part of how we naturally locate our experience of the world, then computer games seem to provide a well matched medium for learning. Imaginative story construction is another area that psychology and recent neuroscience research can also shed some light on. Bruner (1987, p.18), as he says, based on decades of research and clinical observation, concluded that the ways of telling and the ways of conceptualising that go with them become so habitual that they finally become recipes for structuring experience itself, for laying down routes into memory, for not only guiding the life narrative up to the present but directing it into the future. In a later work (2003, p.8) he adds it is the sense of things often derived from stories that makes real-life references possible. Schank and Abelson (1995, p.1), go further to say stories about ones experiences and the experiences of others are the fundamental constituents of human memory, knowledge and social communication. They argue that we construct our memories, recall, know and understand using story. Indeed there is a wide body of literature that echoes the idea that story is primary in human meaning making (Egan, 1997; Haven, 2007; McAdams, 1993; Polkinghorn, 1988; Schank, 1990). Gee, in The Ecology of Games (2008), draws attention to the ability of computer games and simulations to embody meaning in a way that words alone cannot. This observation seems to reflect the findings of Lakoff and Johnson in their examination of the role of metaphor (1980). They maintain that they cannot find an instance of an abstract concept that isnt expressed metaphorically in terms of embodied experience. For example, they argued that people possess extensive knowledge about their bodies (e.g. eating) and situations (e.g. verticality), and that abstract concepts draw on this knowledge metaphorically. For example, love can be understood as eating (being consumed by a lover), and affective experience can be 18

understood as verticality (happy is up, sad is down). They maintain that how we use language and think about the world is a reflection on our direct experience of the world, that our physiological perceptions are intimately tied to language and thinking and that it is this embodiment of language that gives us meaning (Johnson, 2007). The intimate relationship between body and cognition, the idea that actions that use the world to improve cognition, are also illustrated in the works of Clark (1997, 2003, 2008), Feldman (2006), and Maglio et al. (2008). Barsalou, a neurophysiologist, seems to offer a model of how this might work in his description of Perceptual Symbol Systems (1999). He describes how we might come to know the world and develop the necessary linguistic connections to talk about it based on our perceptual experience. An important aspect of Barsalous model is our ability to run simulations, something that is innate and integral to how the brain works, when we perceive, remember or think. Bruner believes that story structures our thought (2003), but if Barsalou is correct, it would be the other way around, it would be the structure of our experience and the way we conceptualise, that naturally lead us to use story to express our thoughts. If the fundamental way our thoughts take place is as simulations, this would seem to hint at the close connection that allows us to engage with computer games so easily, since all computer games at their core are simulations of one form or another (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004).

Conclusion
The neuroscience literature is offering an alternative understanding of the role of narrative and play, or embodied cognition and emotion, when we consider the playing of computer games. An investigation into the use of computer games for learning now needs to be conducted to see if this model avoids the problems experienced by researchers operating in a progressive development paradigm.

The Psychology of Education Review, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2011

Emotion, ambiguity and telling stories

Correspondence
Phil Marston School of Education, University of Aberdeen, Kings College, Aberdeen AB24 5UA. Email: p.marston@abdn.ac.uk Research Supervisors: Prof. Do Coyle, Education, and Dr Judith Masthoff, Computing Science.

References
Barsalou, L.W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems [Electronic version]. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 22(4), 577660. Barthes, R. (1977). From work to text in image/music/text (Trans., Stephen Heath). New York: Noonday. Bruner, J. (1987). Life as narrative. Social Research, 54, 1132. Bruner, J. (2003). Making stories: Law, literature, life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Caillois, R. (1961). Man, play and games. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. (Original work published 1958.) Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Clark, A. (2003). Natural-born cyborgs: Minds, technologies, and the future of human intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press. Clark, A. (2008). Supersising the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. New York: Oxford University Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperCollins. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: HarperCollins. Damasio, A.R. (1994). Descartes error: Emotion, reason and the human brain [Electronic version]. London: Random House. Egan, K. (1997). The educated mind: How cognitive tools shape our understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Egenfeldt-Nielson, S. (2005). Beyond edutainment: Exploring the educational potential of computer games [Electronic version]. PhD dissertation. IT-University of Copenhagen. Feldman, J.A. (2006). From molecule to metaphor: A neural theory of language. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Gee, J.P. (2007). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gee, J.P. (2008). Learning and games [Electronic version]. In K. Salen (Ed.), The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp.2140). The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Groos, K. (1898). The play of animals [Electronic version]. New York: Appleton. Haven, K. (2007). Story proof: The science behind the startling power of story [Electronic version]. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. Huizinga, J. (1949). Homo Ludens: A study of the play element in culture. Oxon, UK: Routledge. (Original work published 1938.) Ito, M. (2009). Engineering play: A cultural history of childrens software [Electronic version]. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Johnson, M. (2007). The meaning of the body: Aesthetics of human understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McAdams, D. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York: Morrow. Maglio, P.P., Wenger, M.J. & Copeland, A.M. (2008). Evidence for the role of self-priming in epistemic action: Expertise and the effective use of memory [Electronic version]. Acta Psychologica, 127, 7288. Mood, A. & Specht, R.D. (1954). Gaming as a technique of analysis [Electronic version]. Paper 579. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. Pellis, S. & V. Pellis. (2009). The playful brain: Venturing to the limits of neuroscience. Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications. Polkinghorne, D. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Salen, K. (2008). Toward an ecology of gaming [Electronic version]. In K. Salen (Ed.), The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp.120). The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

The Psychology of Education Review, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2011

19

Phil Marston
Salen, K. & E. Zimmerman. (2004). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Schank, R.C. (1990). Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Schank, R.C. & Abelson, R.P. (1995). Knowledge and memory: The real story. In R.S. Wyer, Jr. (Ed.), Advances in social cognition, Volume VIII (pp.186). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Squire, K.D. (2004). Replaying history: Learning world history through playing civilization III [Electronic version]. PhD dissertation. Instructional Systems Technology Department, Indiana University. Sutton-Smith, B. (1997). The ambiguity of play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Turner, M. (1998). The literary mind: The origins of thought and language. New York: Oxford University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. 2004. Imagination and creativity in childhood [Electronic version]. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42(1), 797. (Original work published 1967.) Yerkes, R.M. & Dodson, J.D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation [Electronic version]. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18, 459482.

E-mail or blog its your choice

The Societys free Research Digest service features cutting-edge research reports, links to the latest journal special issues, and to the best psychology-related newspaper and magazine articles available on the web. You can subscribe to the fortnightly e-mail, or visit the blog.

www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog

20

The Psychology of Education Review, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2011

Copyright of Psychology of Education Review is the property of British Psychological Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.