Monster Mischief: Designing a Video Game to Assess Selective Sustained Attention

Introduction

Attention is multidimensional and encompasses a diverse set of psychological constructs, including (but not limited to) orienting, selection, shifting, maintenance, and executive attention (see Colombo & Cheatham, 2006; Gitelman, 2003; Fisher & Kloos, in press; Posner & Petersen, 1990). The present work focuses on selective sustained attention which is defined as: “a state of engagement that involves narrowed selectivity and increased commitment of energy and resources on the targeted activity … and that primarily enhances information processing in that system” (Setliff & Courage, 2011, p. 613). Selective sustained attention is important because the ability to selectively allocate attentional resources is commonly hypothesized to aid learning (e.g., Carroll 1963; Bloom, 1976; Oakes, Kannass, & Shaddy, 2002). As stated by Oakes and colleagues (2002), “if attention were constantly reoriented to every new event, it would be difficult ... to learn about any single object or event” (p.1644). In accordance with this assertion, prior research has implicated selective sustained attention in task performance (e.g., Choudhury & Gorman, 2000; DeMarie-Dreblow & Miller, 1988), academic achievement (e.g., Duncan et al. 2007; for review see Goodman, 1990), and learning outcomes (e.g., Fisher, Thiessen, Godwin, Dickerson, & Kloos, 2013; Fisher, Godwin, & Seltman, 2014; Yu & Smith, 2012).