Just 12 hours of action games can improve children's reading comprehension
In today's society, people with poor reading comprehension skills are more likely to face difficulties. This is especially true for children in school. To improve this situation, a team from the University of Geneva created an action game with features to improve reading comprehension. They had children play the game, and the results were noticeable in just 12 hours, with reading comprehension improving.
Enhancing reading skills through a video game mixing action mechanics and cognitive training | Nature Human Behavior
Improving reading skills through action video games - Communiqués de presse - UNIGE
Improving reading skills through action video games
https://phys.org/news/2022-01-skills-action-video-games.html
Attention control is considered a promising method for improving reading comprehension.
Previous research has shown that action games can improve skills such as visual perception, attentional deployment, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. So, in collaboration with the University of Trento in Italy, a team from the University of Geneva created a video game called 'Skies of Manawak,' which combines mini-games to train the skills needed for reading, including working memory, impulse control, and cognitive flexibility.
Skies of Manawak - cognitive training trailer - YouTube
In the game world, players will join forces with flying creatures called 'Rak' to complete various missions to save the planet and progress through the game. Although it is an action game, it has been made non-violent to make it suitable for young children.
The study involved 150 Italian children aged 8 to 12. One group played this game, while the other played the educational programming game 'Scratch.' The two games share the same requirement for attention control, but the action game created by the research team requires children to memorize and respond to specific voice commands within a time limit, while 'Scratch' requires children to understand objects and logical structures in order to establish a programming sequence.
The children were first tested to measure their ability to read words, non-existent words, and paragraphs, as well as their attention skills. They then played their assigned games for two hours a week for six weeks under supervision at school. After a training period, they were tested again.
The results showed that the children who played action games had seven times the improvement in their ability to control their attention compared to the control group. Furthermore, in a reading comprehension test, not only their reading speed but also their accuracy improved. This trend of improvement was not seen in the control group. The improvement in reading comprehension occurred even when the action game did not require any reading ability.
The children were assessed three times, six, 12, and 18 months after the training. The children who played the action game performed better than the control group in each assessment, and their reading comprehension gains were maintained. In fact, their Italian language performance improved significantly over time.
The game has also been translated into German, French, and English. Researcher Irene Altarelli said, 'Italian is a very clear language, with each letter pronounced, whereas French and English are more ambiguous, presenting very different learning challenges. Reading ambiguous languages requires the ability to learn exceptions and how different contexts affect pronunciation, and to rely more heavily on memorization.'
There is an explanation page for 'Skies of Manawak' on the official website of Studio Bliquo, the creator, but the demo version has already been deleted and is no longer available for download.
SKIES OF MANAWAK - STUDIOBLIQUO
https://www.studiobliquo.com/en_GB/skies-of-manawak/
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