Play and Games; a closer look (part II)

That many animals with a certain minimal amount of intelligence play, is a fact. We are no different in this respect (it would be interesting to know if a social structure or the level of intelligence determines the amount of play). Evolutionary biologists propose that play must be important, as the risk of injury during physical play is significant. So why would beings play at all?

Source: Quim Gil on Flickr

Research from psychology supports that play (at least in humans) is beneficial to cognitive, motor and emotional development. Modern findings in neuroscience suggest that play promotes adaptivity and multiple ways to achieve a desired result, improvisation. It should be noted that learning through play is great for learning procedural knowledge, mostly non explicit knowledge on (social) behaviours and rules in different contexts. It's not been established that play promotes declarative knowledge (formal knowledge of facts) more than other activities. That play is great for procedural knowledge seems strangely obvious, considering that a lot of play is rule governed, and games are at least partly constructs of rules.

Wikipedia mentions that Marc Bekoff (a University of Colorado evolutionary biologist) who proposes a "flexibility" hypothesis that attempts to incorporate these findings. It argues that play helps learn to switch and improvise all behaviors more effectively, to be prepared for the unexpected. "Play may teach beings to avoid "false endpoints"". In other words, beings that play will harness the tendency to keep playing with something that works "well enough", eventually allowing them to come up with something that might work better, if only in some situations. This also allows beings to build up various skills that could come in handy in entirely novel situations and actually wield their intelligence as a benefit." Another advantage is that play allows beings to practice concepts that are not formally taught like how to manage misinformation and deceit, supported by findings that play promotes procedural knowledge.

Source: Chefkeem on Pixabay

This is all well but it doesn't answer the question, why a being would engage in play in the first place and enjoy it? Why would dealing with challenge be enjoyable? To answer this question, I'll step out of the play focused box. These days learning is not experienced as fun by many humans, because of institutionalized presumptions such as that it should be serious. Still, play has a lot of positive learning effects and is displayed more by younger beings. This correlates with the fact that only beings with a certain minimal amount of intelligence engage in play and that play has many developmental benefits. There fore I hypothesise that play is originally a behaviour that promotes learning and learning starts out as fun.

Even human children start out with a liking for learning. A great audio takeaway sheds some light on the joy of learning. In the takeaway John Gabrieli (neuroscientist at MIT) gives a short interview. He starts out that the brain has a robust reward mechanism in the brain for the activity of learning, based in the lower part of the basal ganglia. It produces dopamine if a being is put in a state of anticipation and engagement (games are well known to do both). This dopamine reinforces learning and delivers a feeling of joy.

Source: Wikipedia

A girl looks at her feet, she's only three years old. She's playing tag, together with some cousins and her older brother. While she's running away from her one year older cousin her face shows utter concentration. If she trips, she's "it". Not only does she have to fine-tune her motoric movements beyond regular walking, she also has to switch her attention continuously to avoid the branches, tree trunks and the precious roses of her aunt. This stimulates her brain in many ways, the challenge that arises from a difference in what she can and can't yet quite fully do makes the activity even more stimulating. An intrinsic drive to run faster, be smarter and not be "it". The garden borders a forest, and in the distance she can see young deer doing almost the same as she and her family members are doing. They are playfully running after each other. On their drive home her dad suddenly clunks the horn, the deer jump aside to live another day. What greater evolutionary benefit than to make the acquisition of key survival skills fun through play? 

To say that play is only fun because of dopamine while learning in an engaged state, would be too short-sighted. This is just an attempt to put play in a cross-species developmental perspective, though the findings of different areas of science seem to match like a puzzle. It's probably the language barrier, but on first sight the research on animals playing seems to be short at hand. Maybe worth a look on another day...

The gamification thing

Okay, I've been kind of slacking on my posting lately. I've come across Gamification.org once in a while but have never take a good look around. However it looks quite disappointing from my scientific perspective so I think I'll rewrite a large part of it in the coming months.

Let's deal with achievements first:

Achievements are usually locked till a certain action unlocks it, a form of reward. Most often this is used in gamification in the form of a token. You can have multiple kinds of tokens used in the same game like coins, items and abilities. One defining feature of achievements is that they are a reward after fulfilling a fixed criterium. This is opposed to (partly) random token drops or random rewards in any other way.

They may be gained in every form of play like single player, cooperative play, competition or a combination.

However achievements can mean something different for each player for example; some simply want the token, some collect the tokens and some don't even care about the token.

Achievements can be implemented in a myriad of ways most of them are rewards after using a certain skill (task-contingent).
-It may be a reward of the improvement of skill compared to one's previous state.
-It may be a reward of improvement of skill compared to a fixed state.
-It may be a reward after displaying the skill in a certain way (efficiency, frequency etc.).



Other achievements can be linked to behaviour like attendance, performing a certain action (like the finishing the tutorial) and good sportsmanship. However compared to skill display, these behaviours are only displayed little. Behaviour specific achievements may therefore contain very rare achievements.

These achievements can be controlling a player's thoughts, this will decrease the skill of this player and happens mostly in case of harsh direct competition. Achievements can also be used as information by players to measure their skill level. Highly motivated players are theorised not to be under the influence of achievements and might not need them as an information source. This is related to their two main displayed motivation characteristics; desire to be good and the desire to become better.

Adiós, more next time!

Task Motivation a starting point for game research

During my internship I wrote a summary of literature on task motivation specifically to be applied in research on games and learning. In the coming weeks I'll post translated parts of the theory section online for those interested. It serves to be a solid guiding framework into motivation to engage  different elements in games. This in turn can be measured.

Motivation to engage a task can have both an intrinsic and an extrinsic component (Lepper, Corpus & Iyengar, 2005). The intrinsic component stimulates task engagement out of a desire for challenge, pleasure and interest (Lepper et al, 2005). This is called intrinsic motivation.

The extrinsic component stimulates task engagement out of a desire for external reward or dodging punishment. This is called extrinsic motivation. If there's no internal or external stimulus to engage a task it's called amotivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985).

These motivation components are non-homeostatic drive-forces to engage a task (Gorman, 2004, White, 1959), motivation that holds no relation to direct physical needs like hunger and thirst. The concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have originated from the comments of White (1959) on the drive theories of motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Harter, 1978; White, 1959). The drive theories of motivation ascribe task motivation and desire to learn to a desire for external rewards or dodging of punishment. White (1959) used a variety of sources to show that external stimuli alone, are inadequate to explain the full range of human behaver like discovery, play, and a desire to deal with one's surroundings competently.

White (1959) proposed that many behaviors are explained better from a desire to deal with one's surroundings competent and effectively. Harter (1978, 1981), Deci and Ryan (1985) and others after him have operationalised the concepts White (1959) proposed too subsequently test it. His critique has since been tested and supported with evidence. A large part of this research has been done in the context of children and their development in education, some even longitudinal.

Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have their place during the development of children. Though time after time research has shown a correlation between school results and intrinsic motivation for school (Lepper et. al, 2005). Partly because of this, intrinsic motivation is seen as superior to extrinsic motivation. However if a child is amotivated to engage in a certain task at school, rewards may be applied to increase task motivation through extrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985, pp. 263-264).

Literature

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1987). The Support of Autonomy and the Control of Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1024-1037.

Eisenberger, R., Pierce, W. D., Cameron, J. (1999). Effects of Reward on Intrinsic Motivation- Negative, Neutral, and Positive: Comment on Deci, Koestner, and Ryan. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 677-691.

Gorman, P. (2004). Motivation and Emotion. New York: Routledge.

Harter, S. (1981). A new self-report scale of intrinsic versus extrinsic

orientation in the classroom: Motivational and informational components.

Developmental Psychology, 17, 300–312.

Lepper, M. (1983). Extrinsic Reward and Intrinsic Motivation: Implications for the Classroom. In Levine, J.M. & Wang M.C. (Eds.), Teacher and Students Perceptions: Implications for Learning. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum

Lepper, M. R., Corpus, J. H., & Iyengar, S. S. (2005). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations in the classroom: Age differences and academic correlates. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 97(2), pp.184–196.

White, R.W.(1959). Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence. Psychological Review, 66(5).