Stimulation of Video Games and Reaction Time

Abstract-My friend Garnet and I have always been fans of video games and have
enjoyed the escape to a new world that they provide, but in many situations we are
told that these games that we enjoy so much can affect use in negative ways and
make us less stimulated people due to a fabled effect of these games. I thought
that this was an untrue statement and I thought that it needed to be corrected
due to its empty nature. My friend and partner Garnet and I Questioned if this
statement were true which led to the question of this experiment How do video
games affect reaction time and do different genres of video games affect the
brains stimulation differently?. Having this question in mind we conducted an
experiment to see how reaction times are affected by video games and what
genres affect the reaction time differently. We found that Video games do affect
your reaction time and make it faster and more efficient, this proved my
hypothesis and debunked the theory that videogames are bad for you mind.

Introduction-We decided to do this project because we wanted to see if the rumor

that video games are rot your mind and make you a less capable person, we were
trying to disprove this by seeing if video games actually helped stimulate your mind
and doesnt affect it negatively. I think that by proving this people will be more
open to having their children play these games and not think negatively about them.
We were also testing to see if different genres of video games affect people
differently, this will help us know if certain things such as more exciting games
help people get stimulated. I believed that the outcome of this experiment would
be that more involved and stressful games would make people have a better
reaction time and that other less stressful more casual games would have slower
section times, and that all video games would have faster reaction times. The data
turned out that all the people playing video games had faster reaction times and
the genre didnt really become a factor. Many believe the same thing such as the
writer of the article Video Games, Even Violent Ones, Aren't All Bad for You
, they thought that video games do Have positive effects on the mind and give
many skills such as cognitive ability. And the article 5 Reasons Video Games Aren't
so bad after all, say that videogames help people get better cognitive skills, and
surgeons use games to perform better.
Question and Hypothesis-We are asking how different genres of video games
affect the reaction times of both males and females OR how reaction times of
males and females declines or does not improve with certain genres or as a whole
If video games make your mind operate differently, than different genres will
affect the reaction time of the player because their minds are stimulated.

Methods & Materials-We are investigating what video game genres make the mind
more stimulated and what genres of video games will refine reflex skills and make
the mind react to something quicker and be more aware of ones surroundings, and
what video game genres dont stimulate the mind as much leading to a less fast
reaction time and an impaired awareness of ones surroundings. We will do this
experiment by taking a group of twenty kids in the school that we will take from
surveying kids during our lunch block to see if they have previously played these

video games because I think that if we do kids that have played the games we will
get a bias and the final test results will be inaccurate due to an elevated interest
in the game because of previous use of the game, and if they have not we will take
them into a room where we will have three computers in different places in the
room and let each kid play one of the games from different genres including a
puzzle game that challenges the player, and shooting game that gets the player to
give undivided attention to the game and if that attention is not given it will result
in loss of the game, a stressful game that requires a lot of effort and gives players
redo a piece of the game many times until they get perfection in it and a hot
burning rage built inside them (its an annoying game), and a game that does not
require a lot of attention and you can play without really putting much effort
forward, the games being Portal (a puzzle game involving different confusing
challenges), The Binding of Isaac (a game in which you shoot enemies while you walk
around a room with limited health), Super Meat Boy (a game involving reflexes and
a lot of attention to finish each short level), and Intergalactic Bubbles (a casual
game with a simple premise) we will let a group of five play each game and once
they are finished playing the game we will get them to do ten rounds of a Human
Benchmark Reflex Test (a program that tests reaction and reflex time by asking
the participants to do tasks as they appear in the fastest time possible) and we will
compare the reaction times of the different groups of people that played the
different games. And after playing the games we will ask the students various
questions about their experience in playing the game and if they were interested
by the game style, if they personally liked the controls, or other questions such as
if they like the layout. We will ask questions that will give us information about
their personal game experience and what they like and disliked which will let us
cross reference the reaction data with the interest question results which will give
us an idea about whether it is the genre that stimulates people more of if it is the
interest people have in a specific video game or video game style. I think our
finished product will be a paper that tells the results of both the reflex test to
different video games in a graph and also the reflex test with the answers to the
questions about the interest in the game in a written form, with an essay on what
our personal opinion is about the reaction data being about the genre or the
interest in the game. I think that this will be good because it will not only provide
what we think about our data but will also give the readers a chance to make their
own conclusions because all the data will be provided. Relative to what I said we will
provide a ballot box and cards at our exhibition that will let the reader provide
what they personally thought the results of our experiment we triggered by either
the genre of the video game or the personal interest in the video game that the
group played, because by looking at this data we will learn to be more open minded
about the results of an experiment which will lead to better more accurate results
in the future of our scientific career and also I think it would be interesting to do
an experiment inside another experiment because it will provide us more
information on doing experiments which we will use later on in our physics class an
on to other tasks in life that will require us to do experiments and look at the
different factor in a set of data. I think that we will also provide a two fold board
that will not only have our paper including the result of the experiment, but also
some information on whether it could be the genre of the video game or the
personal interest on the individual playing. Our two fold board will also provide the
charts of the data that we collected and some information on the games that the
subjects were playing. We will include enough information for the reader to make
an educated choice on if it is the genre that makes someone more stimulated or if
it's personal interest. As well as those thing on our two fold board we will also
include the process that we used to make this project so if another person wants
to make a similar thing they will have the resource necessary to do that and do it

with confidence and a good understanding of what their task is and how they
should go about doing this process in a way that will lead them to get accurate data
and a conclusion that is supported by the data and how there could be mistakes in
the process that will need to be refined and changed to make into a better more
useful final outcome that is supported by the scientific community and does not
have error. The last thing on our board will the use for our project and why it
needed to be done and how it wasnt redundant because anyone can do a project
and call it good but to have a project and be confident about it I think that you
need to see the value in. And I think that this project is necessary because a lot of
people play these games and they should know the effects of these video games on
their minds and how they affect their reaction time. I think that this is a better
project than some other project about things such as a polar bears mating habits
because this project is relevant to the average reader and most can relate which is
a good thing because it will captivate the reader more but it will get the test
subject to be more interested which can lead to not only more test subjects
wanting to be in the experiment but the ones that are in the experiment to give
their full effort towards the experiment which will give more accurate test result
and will make it an all around better environment and also a more productive
environment. And as I was saying previously if the reader if more captivated and
interested they will be more inclined to give their opinion on what they think the
outcome of the experiment is due to, so overall if your experiment is good it will
lead to better data all around which will make the experiment even more strong.

Results-

The graph above shows the reaction time in milliseconds of 6 different test
subjects before and after, of 4 genres of video games. Each test subject was
assigned a color for the graphing purposes. For graphing reasons we will sometimes
refer to the subjects as males or females. We can see in the platformer section,
3/3 of males reaction times became better after playing a platformer game.
However only 1/3 of females reaction time improved after playing a platformer,
and 2/3 reaction times became worse. 2/3 of males reaction times improved after
playing a puzzle game while only 1/3 of females reaction times improved. 3/3 of
males improved after playing a trial and error game and all 3 females test
subjects reaction time improved. All male and female test subjects reaction time
improved while playing a First Person Shooter (FPS) game. From this information
we can clearly see the two most beneficial genres of video game to stimulate
reaction times are First Person Shooters (FPS) and Trial and Error.

Discussion-The experiment was created to test as accurately as possible how

different video game genres affect reaction times between males and females. We
were very passionate about this topic as we are both frequent and involved gamers.
Mainly we expected to see a incremental growth in reaction times when test
subject played FPS and platformer games. We were half right, we found that FPS
was one genre that positively affected reaction time however the other was trial
and error. We did not expect this at all, but were very excited by this information.
To quickly summarize our data, we found the following. All male subjects
benefitted from playing a platformer and 1/3 of females did. 2/3 of male subjects
benefitted from playing a puzzle game and 1/3 of females did. All male and female
subjects benefitted from playing a trial and error game. All male and female
subjects benefitted from playing a First Person Shooter (FPS) game. These results
helped us understand which games we should default to if we want to sharpen
reaction times. This may help people who have the same passion as us and are
willing to spend a little time to improve their reaction times. We are extremely
confident in the validity of our tests and results. However we would both be
interested in testing a larger quantity of people. It would allow for a easier
percentage and with a bigger test pool you would have more detailed answer on
which games benefit you. With limited time and resources we were not able to have
that many test subjects or test more genres of video games, such as survival
games or a possible RPG. All in all we would really love to take this experiment
further because the results of a bigger test pool would be extremely interesting
and useful for people like us.
Bibliography
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"Video Games Speed up Reaction Time - Futurity." Futurity. N.p., 13 Sept. 2010. Web.
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"Which Video Games Make You Smarter: Action, Puzzle or Strategy?" YouTube.
YouTube, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.