TY - JOUR
T1 - Using games to understand the mind
AU - Allen, Kelsey
AU - Brändle, Franziska
AU - Botvinick, Matthew
AU - Fan, Judith E.
AU - Gershman, Samuel J.
AU - Gopnik, Alison
AU - Griffiths, Thomas L.
AU - Hartshorne, Joshua K.
AU - Hauser, Tobias U.
AU - Ho, Mark K.
AU - de Leeuw, Joshua R.
AU - Ma, Wei Ji
AU - Murayama, Kou
AU - Nelson, Jonathan D.
AU - van Opheusden, Bas
AU - Pouncy, Thomas
AU - Rafner, Janet
AU - Rahwan, Iyad
AU - Rutledge, Robb B.
AU - Sherson, Jacob
AU - Şimşek, Özgür
AU - Spiers, Hugo
AU - Summerfield, Christopher
AU - Thalmann, Mirko
AU - Vélez, Natalia
AU - Watrous, Andrew J.
AU - Tenenbaum, Joshua B.
AU - Schulz, Eric
PY - 2024/6/30
Y1 - 2024/6/30
N2 - Board, card or video games have been played by virtually every individual in the world. Games are popular because they are intuitive and fun. These distinctive qualities of games also make them ideal for studying the mind. By being intuitive, games provide a unique vantage point for understanding the inductive biases that support behaviour in more complex, ecological settings than traditional laboratory experiments. By being fun, games allow researchers to study new questions in cognition such as the meaning of ‘play’ and intrinsic motivation, while also supporting more extensive and diverse data collection by attracting many more participants. We describe the advantages and drawbacks of using games relative to standard laboratory-based experiments and lay out a set of recommendations on how to gain the most from using games to study cognition. We hope this Perspective will lead to a wider use of games as experimental paradigms, elevating the ecological validity, scale and robustness of research on the mind.
AB - Board, card or video games have been played by virtually every individual in the world. Games are popular because they are intuitive and fun. These distinctive qualities of games also make them ideal for studying the mind. By being intuitive, games provide a unique vantage point for understanding the inductive biases that support behaviour in more complex, ecological settings than traditional laboratory experiments. By being fun, games allow researchers to study new questions in cognition such as the meaning of ‘play’ and intrinsic motivation, while also supporting more extensive and diverse data collection by attracting many more participants. We describe the advantages and drawbacks of using games relative to standard laboratory-based experiments and lay out a set of recommendations on how to gain the most from using games to study cognition. We hope this Perspective will lead to a wider use of games as experimental paradigms, elevating the ecological validity, scale and robustness of research on the mind.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85196526437&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41562-024-01878-9
DO - 10.1038/s41562-024-01878-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85196526437
SN - 2397-3374
VL - 8
SP - 1035
EP - 1043
JO - Nature Human Behaviour
JF - Nature Human Behaviour
IS - 6
ER -