Understanding the games:
Although the student’s experience of playing these games will be very different, the games exercise the same cognitive skills and work very similarly. In both games, the student begins with a very simple task – he or she tracks a target object around the screen. When the target changes to a “go” signal matching the clue at the top of the screen, the student should click on it. If the student clicks on the target in time, they either collect a jewel or free a trapped monkey. When the student makes enough correct responses, the target begins to move faster. If the student makes several mistakes, the target will move slower to make it easier.
There are 163 task levels in each of these games. The first 27 levels all have only one target on the screen at a time. Levels 28 to 55 go through the same task variations but now with two targets on the screen at once. Once the student completes all the 2-target levels, the program goes back to the most difficult of the 1-target levels. Children may wonder why this is happening. We do it for the same reason that in music training one returns to earlier-learned technically easier pieces after working on more complex pieces; it allows for consolidation of skill development and mastery of additional elements present but not mastered when first working on the easier task. In these games, returning to 1-target levels with significant memory loads allows the child the opportunity to do the task faster and more consistently than the first time around. After returning to the 1-target levels, the child works through the 2-target levels again before moving on to 3-target levels. After completing these, the child returns to the difficult 2-target levels and works their way up through the levels again.
Core Cognitive Capacities Engaged:
All levels of these games exercise sustained attention. The game is entertaining enough to interest children, but the simplicity and relative infrequency and repetitive nature of game “events” in comparison to typical commercial video games require children to use and strengthen their internal ability to sustain their attention. These games exercise response inhibition beginning in level 4 by requiring children to ignore distractors (blue jewels or pirate monkeys) but respond quickly to correct signals. The need for response inhibition is then increased in level 8 by having the target switch back and forth between which signals are correct (red vs blue jewels or local vs pirate monkeys), so targets that were to be clicked on just moments before have now to be ignored. Cognitive control and flexibility are exercised at the same time. Working memory is exercised beginning in level 16 when the children have to click on a target only if it shares a property of the one that came before it (two red jewels in a row, or two blue boots in a row, for example). Multiple simultaneous attentions are engaged and the other capacities are further challenged when there are 2 or 3 targets on the screen at the same time. Demands on working memory and cognitive flexibility are particularly great at 2 and 3 target levels, because each target has its own “history” and the current correct response for one target may be blue while red is the correct color for another target.