This week's readings: EUREKA!

Citation
Tavinor, G. (2005). Video games, fiction, and emotion, Proceedings of the second Australasian conference on Interactive entertainment. Sydney, Australia: Creativity & Cognition Studios Press.

Summary
Tavinor offers some fascinating insights into the link between cognition, and fiction and emotional effects derived from playing video games. The author examines a few different proposed theories as to the links between thinking process and fiction, honing in on a particular model, pretence cognition, which he believes to be correct. In this model, the game exists as a box in the player’s mind, with elements of the game present as “representational tokens” in thought, similar to thoughts about real-life objects. He also examines games as interactive fiction, finding that the interaction with the story creates cognitive effects in a person that are similar to thoughts about real world challenges. Moreover, Tavinor examines emotional effects created by specific games, stating that it is simply a result of this representational way of thinking.

Comments and Relevance
Tavinor’s research is one of the few studies which seem to be specifically addressed at understanding the thought processes of adults. While Tavinor does not explicitly state these thought patterns occur in adults, his selection of mature-rated game titles such as Grand Theft Auto and System Shock 2 indicate these cognitive processes occur in adults. The use of personal pronouns initially makes his approach to discrediting other cognitive theories a little weak, although the justification as to each decision far exceeds that of personal bias.

This article is an incredibly useful article in determining the psychological effects of games pertaining to older gamers. The use of commercial games which many adults are fond with in order to gain an understanding of these cognitive theories makes it a foundational paper in this research project.