It’s a bird, it’s a…yeah, it is a plane! Oh, and also a Tower? We are back with a cognalysis of two games, Sky Team, fresh off its Spiel des Jahres win, and also Wandering Towers.
Game References
Hanabi, Sky Team, That’s Not a Hat, Wandering Towers
Research References
Baddeley, A. (1992). Working memory. Science, 255(5044), 556-559.
DeLoache, J. S., Cassidy, D. J., & Brown, A. L. (1985). Precursors of mnemonic strategies in very young children’s memory. Child Development, 125-137.
Multi-tasking happens a lot. We’re in a meeting, we email. We watch TV, we text. And to the chagrin of many, we play a game with our friends, we scroll through social media. What does cognitive psychology have to say about doing multiple things at once?
Game References
Flux, Rise of Fenris, Scythe, Stay Cool, What Remains of Edith Finch
Caird, J. K., Johnston, K. A., Willness, C. R., Asbridge, M., & Steel, P. (2014). A meta-analysis of the effects of texting on driving. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 71, 311-318.
Pashler, H. (1994). Dual-task interference in simple tasks: data and theory. Psychological bulletin, 116(2), 220.
Grant, D. A., & Berg, E. (1948). A behavioral analysis of degree of reinforcement and ease of shifting to new responses in a Weigl-type card-sorting problem. Journal of experimental psychology, 38(4), 404.
Kanfer, R., Ackerman, P. L., Murtha, T. C., Dugdale, B., & Nelson, L. (1994). Goal setting, conditions of practice, and task performance: A resource allocation perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(6), 826.
I consider the popular board game Pandemic from a number of different angles. What makes it an interesting game, cognitively speaking? I touch on decision making, attention, cooperation, and also the Legacy and iPad versions.
You need to have focused attention while playing games. If you don’t, you might miss a critical move in a board game, or totally miss that other player about to blast you in Call of Duty. This episode considers how attention works as we play games.
