Effects of video game playing on measures of spatial performance: Gender effects in late adolescence

Older adolescents played the video game Tetris for a total of 6 hr each in two separate experiments. None of the subjects had had any prior experience with Tetris, a video game requiring the rapid rotation and placement of seven different-shaped blocks. In Experiment 1, subjects were pre- and posttested on paper-and-pencil measures of spatial ability. In Experiment 2, computerized measures of mental rotation and visualization skills were administered. In both studies, experimental subjects' pre-post scores were compared to pre-post scores obtained from a control sample of subjects. Results indicated that playing Tetris improves mental rotation time and spatial visualization time. Consistent with earlier research, reliable and consistent differences between males and females were only obtained on complex mental rotation tasks.