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KEK
VIDEO GAMES WIN JN.
REVOLUTIONARY WAR BATTLE AGAINST CRITICS
By Mike Shaw
f the video game industry had a
military division, it might have
raised its flag May 23 in Harvard
Yard. On that day, without firing a
shot, the industry achieved a great
·
victory.
Ip the seat of American intellec-
tualism, social scientists, medical
researchers, and educators gathered to
announce in one clear, discernible
voice that the video game is an exciting
and useful means for the betterment of
society.
.
The occasion for the proclamation
was a two-day conference titled "Video
Games and Human Development: A
Research Agenda for the '80s." The
conference, sponsored by the Harvard
Graduate School of Education, pro-
vided a forum for the most extensive
research yet conducted on video
games. About 200 learning researchers,
medical and social scientists, and
games producers, as well as the busi-
ness and media representatives
attended.
The symposium raised nearly as
many questions as it answered about
the uses of video games in medical and
social rehabilitation and in education.
It also confirmed the games play an
essential role in the development of
America's youth and, even more
emphatically,that they can be a posi-
tive influence in the lives of children.
"The symposium proved to be an
excellent first step in showing the need
for research . in this area," claimed
Inabeth Miller of Harvard who
organized and directed the conference.
Miller said the conference estab-
lished "credibility for a phenomenon
people thought was frivolous ." She
added that showing video game
research was "respectable research"
that would, she hoped, lead to funding
for further studies from video game
association and corporations, as well
as from government agencies interested
in the games for training purposes.
I
Industry studies
But video game studies sponsored
by the video game industry may lack
10
Herbert Kohl, teacher and writer, hopes
video game equipment will be as
available to. schools where poor students
attend as it is in schools that cater to
students of wealthy families .
credibility. Initial stories on the con-
ference in the New York Times and
Boston Globe played up Atari's
$40,000 gift to Harvard to stage the
forum, intimating the happy findings
were guaranteed by the grant.
Miller, however, opened each ses-
sion by insisting Harvard invited the
speakers and formed the agenda
without prejudice. The conference was
to present provocative, and even
adversary views on video games, she
said hammering away at the reports .
But little criticism of video games
ever surfaced. Without exception,
those who had researched videos as
they affect social behavior, as they can
be used in medical rehabilitation and
in learning situations, found video
games to exert positive influences on
their patients or students.
"What little research there is is
overwhelmingly positive," Miller said
later summing up the symposium.
Video games are so useful,research-
ers found, because they are so capti-
vating.
Antonia Stone, a teacher in New
York and New Jersey for 25 years, con-
ducted studies on using computers to
educate correctional institution
inmates under a grant from the Ford
Foundation. She found that video
games were her most useful tools in
getting convicts interested in learning
things as basic as how to read and
write.
Patricia Greenfield, professor of
psychology at UCLA, noted that "chil-
dren learn better when there is active
involvement," rather than in the pas-
sive role they play in most formal edu-
cational circumst1;tnces.
"Rather than mindless," she said
countering a popular criticism of the
games, "video games incorporate
types and degrees of complexities that
are impossible in other games."
Video games teach youngsters how
to deal with "multiple interactive vari-
ables," she said, "and that is what life
is ."
Greenfield 's.r.; di s coveries came
during her studfes to determine the
cognitive effects of video games in
comparison to television. She found ,
as a byproduct of that study, that chil-
dren unanimously preferred videos to
TV.
Videos help kids
Sylvia Weir is a medical doctor and
heads a computer science research lab
at Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology. In her work with autistic and
dyslexic children, she found her ability
to help children was greatly enhanced
when she used computer games. She
discovered that children were not only
attracted to the games but received
great satisfaction by being able to
exert some control over movement
and direction by manipulating the
ga•'fle controls.
One of her students, Michael
Murphy, progressed from almost total
helplessness to one. of the nation's
most brilliant computer programmers,
and in the transformation, became one
of the most celebrated rehabilitative
cases .in recent medical history. His
capacity for spacial understanding
might never have been discovered had
Weir not introduced him to a video
game.
(continued on page 19)
PLAY METER, July 15, 1983