Understanding the Game:
In this game, Pirate Pete is late for a trip and works frantically to pack his trunk with different items he needs. The students sees these objects tossed into the air and must click on the object that matches what the clue in top right corner of the screen indicates. If the student gets it right, the object will fly into the magic trunk – if they get it wrong, the object will crash to the ground. Once the student makes enough correct responses, the speed of the objects increases. As the student goes up a level the system introduces more and more objects, until they fill the screen. All levels of the game follow this simple rule, but the categories may begin switching in the middle of the level, or the definition of the categories may grow more abstract or narrow.
There are 186 levels in Pirate Pete’s Packing Panic (PP) which are defined by the number of objects on the screen, the nature of the target category and additional cognitive tasks added to the required categorizations.
Core Cognitive Functions Engaged:
PP introduces the concept of categories and then exercises the use and formation of categories at all levels of the game. The ability to organize information, concepts and skills into categories forms the basis for many higher-level analytic abilities, including abstract thought and language itself. Names of things, nouns, represent categories of things and are an important part of how we organize the world around us. Using categories in organizing incoming information improves processing and memory of the information. Some children spontaneously use categories much less than others.
PP also exercises multiple other core cognitive capacities. Sustained attention and speed of information processing are necessary as the objects move across the screen and as the number of objects on the screen at the same time increases. Response inhibition is required when the target category changes and pictures that were previously targets are no longer (e.g., levels 82-84, “Plants but not Trees”). Multiple simultaneous attentions is exercised when there are multiple objects on the screen and when the child is searching for more than one target category at the same time (e.g. levels 46-48, “Plants or Animals”). Cognitive flexibility is important when the child is asked to move rapidly from one category to another (e.g. levels 94-96, “Food alternating with Clothes”) and to find pairs of things in the same category without a specified target category (e.g. levels 118-120, “Find Two in the Same Category”). Working memory is necessary when the target category moves back and forth between two or rotates among three possibilities (e.g., levels 154-156, “Furniture, Sports, and Machines in Rotation”).