Impact of Kinect Game on Primary School Students' Mental Computation Speed

Introduction

Today’s children have grown up within digital technology. The digital world such as computer games, social media and internet has an important effect on children, who were introduced to technology at early ages, in terms of studying, playing games and even socializing. Games, which have served to humankind as the biggest part of entertainment for hundreds of years, now meet us in a digital form that people prefer just to spend their free time. Surveys on young people among many countries have shown that children spend a large proportion of their time with media (Blumberg, Blades, & Oates, 2013). Rideout, Foehr and Roberts (2010) reported that American youngsters between 8 to 18-year-olds play video games approximately for 1.15 hour on average and time spent on playing games is increasing day by day. In 1999, the average time that was spent for games was 24 minutes; in 2004 it was 49 minutes and in 2009 it turned out to 73 minutes. Vandercammen and Vandenbrande (2011) noted that teenagers in Belgium play game for 1.20 hour per day and the ones in Netherland play game for 1.61 hour per day. It is reported that at least 83% of children and adolescents in Singapore play games in 2011 (Gentile et al., 2011). Moreover, more than half of junior high school students have played online games in Taiwan (Tarng & Tsai, 2010). In Turkey, however, a rapidly increasing digital player profile has been reported. For this reason, educators are conducting numerous studies on whether digital games can be used as a supporting tool in education or not. If we can’t benefit from the advantages that digital world encompasses children and adolescents, we will not be able to catch the spirit of the digital age in respect of revealing students’ potential (Judson, 2010). Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training Game comprises a variety of puzzles that primarily involve mental calculations and memorisation. At regular intervals players complete a ‘brain-age check’, which provides feedback to the individual about his or her speed and accuracy in tasks. In this study the smaller and bigger (< – >) comparison game was selected to investigate the impact of Kinect game on students’ mental computation speed.