Video Games: A Significant Cognitive Artifact of Contemporary Youth Culture

Abstract

Video games are not just an important cultural artifact of youth culture but have considerable cognitive worth. Centered within an information processing theory and mediating processes’ framework, the empirical qualitative study investigated, via stimulated recall methods, the thinking skills and strategies of five teenagers while playing an action-adventure video game. Sixteen types and 600 instances of cognitive skills and 11 types and 155 instances of cognitive strategies were identified. The thinking skills included high engagement with school valued cognitive skills, such as metacognition, and deduction and induction strategies. The findings support the informal educative value of playing recreation video games and their inclusion in schools.