Space Fortress was developed by cognitive psychologists as a tool to study learning and training strategies (Donchin et al, 1989). The game requires players to manage multiple demanding and overlapping component tasks and simulates the complexity of many important real-world tasks such as piloting, air traffic control, and radar/sonar monitoring. It incorporates difficult motor, memory, multi-tasking, and visual/attentional components, many of which were taken directly from the cognitive psychology literature. The complexity, difficulty, and well-defined components of the Space Fortress game makes it an ideal research tool to study learning, training, and transfer of training.
from IPython.display import YouTubeVideo
YouTubeVideo("0fcWqmRiIo0")
Files required for installation is on GitHub
You clone a repository with git clone [url]. That creates a directory on your current working directory.
$ git clone https://github.com/hyunkyulee/SF_installation.git
I focused on understanding the mechanisms of human learning and developing effective training strategies for learning complex tasks. I trained 75 younger participants age between 18-30 with a video game called Space Fortress using two different learning strategies: Hybrid Variable-Priority Training (HVT, emphasizing cognitive flexibility), and Full Emphasis Training (FET, emphasizing all components of the task equivalently). When I compared the two training strategies, HVT produced 14% better performance than FET after 30 hours of training, and the HVT benefit was mostly from accelerated learning in the early phase of training. The benefit of HVT is most salient for participants starting with low proficiency, and the benefit of HVT on skill acquisition persisted seven months after the training (Lee et al., 2012a). Interestingly, the game training strategies modulated the interactionb between baseline cognitive abilities and training success (Lee et al, under review).
The superiority of HVT was also observed in terms of functional brain plasticity. Assessment of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) suggested that training with the complex video game led to a reduction of brain activity in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) including frontal pole, and superior frontal gyrus, usually known for top-down attention and executive control. However, the decreased cortical activity depended on the training strategy. Compared to the FET, HVT showed greater decrease of activation in left precuneus cortex, extending into left lateral occipital cortex, and in right superior frontal cortex, where related to visuospatial attention and goal-directed planning of motor control, suggesting increased efficiency of brain function due to training strategy (Lee et al, 2012b, Prakash et al., 2012).