The Tetris Effect
The Tetris Effect
Neo_Chalchus | 146920 Reads | The Tetris Effect
As I have let on in previous posts, I am very very very interested in psychology, and as I was browsing different psychology material I came across something intersting.
There is an actual psychological condition known as "The Tetris Effect." It is a condition where prolonged repetition of advanced brainwork causes you to repeat the behavior in real life. This first showed up when the popular game Tetris was released. Tetris required you fit falling blocks of different shapes into each other as they fall to create a line, which then disappears. This requires a large amount of spacial thinking and forces the player to think ahead to what will happen next. People soon became mentally addicted (different from physical addiction) to the game, and kept playing for extended periods of time repetitively. But after such prolonged mental activity, people wouldn't stop at just the game. People would walk down the street and see a bunch of boxes and line them up in there head, and try to stack trees so they fit each other.
Similar cases that have nothing to do with Tetris have appeared ever since. After intense continuous play of Dance Dance Revolution, it has been reported that people see arrows flying downward when they close there eyes, and they move in only the four direction allowed in DDR. People have reported reaching for a non-existent button in their car to fire a missile at a person in front of them. Panic attacks have surfaced when FPS people notice that there isn't a crosshair in the middle of their vision and they are unarmed.
Video games aren't nessicarily the cause, people have reported that they frequently reach for Ctrl+Z when they do something wrong, or Ctrl+S when they do something right and want to save it. Ever since people were looking for happenings like this, they seemed to just pop up in everyday life. One person involuntarily moves to click the rewind button on an imaginary remote, another slinks along corners to avoid being shot at by an imaginary assassin, while yet another avoids video cameras at banks after a Splinter Cell binge.
While it isn't nessicarily a 'problem' common among people as a whole, it has gripped many people whether they are aware of it or not.
Visual, kinesthetic, and mental repetition are not the only forms that this shows up. A similar ailment are subjects of dreams. Have you ever stopped coding after a 4 hour coding spree, then go to bed exhausted and dream of code? Even common harmless things such as having a song stuck in your head are caused by the same process. This process is most likely linked to "Procedural Memory" which is what you use when you react without thinking, as if you were trained to do what ever it was after the memory receives conformation on the stimuli, this is the root of muscle memory.
Further reading: http://www.citypaper.net/articles/032196/article038.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect Replaying the game: Hypnagogic images in normals and amnesics By: Stickgold, R., Malia, A., Maguire, D., Roddenberry, D., & O'Connor, M
And that pretty much sums it up, NC
Mr_Cheese 18 years ago
intersting read. very true too… as in the mental repatition… not the video game section.
ghost 18 years ago
nice article, enlightened me to some of my own habitual actions such as typing stuff on an imaginary keyboard at school during classes, and sometimes moving my thumbs when i walk or move around…
ghost 18 years ago
my life is kinda like Tetris… everything has to be in order: my closet, my room, my file structure (i panick when a file is in a folder it's not supposed to be in!), etc… I love the article!!!
ghost 18 years ago
great article! the Ctrl+Z thing happens with me sometimes! :O i just think of it for a split second but my body doesnt react to the thought :P
ghost 18 years ago
Don't over react, but dud you copy the way i put TC at the end of all my PM's ?? Nice aricle! So annoying when you can't crtl + z it!!!!!
ghost 18 years ago
Haha I recently remolished my room to repaint it…as soon as I put the new colour on, I wished it was only on photoshop. Or even if I could click the back button…. Schweeeet articlette dude
Neo_Chalchus 18 years ago
Glad you guys liked it, I was wondering how it would go cause it was kinda an obscure topic, but I am very glad it went over well. No tancurrom, I was doing NC at the end of my posts for a while cause I don't wanna type Neo_chalchus all the time, also there are two ways I spell it and I don't wanna get the two mixed up.
ghost 18 years ago
Yeah nice article.Sometimes when I can't find something in real life it like passes through my mind that it would be good to use the Find function :) .To bad we dont have one in real life. ;)
Neo_Chalchus 18 years ago
The time is different for everyone…its your body, and mind (and your seritonin.) But I believe you really have to get into it…I mean like playing 8 hours a day for a few weeks, and actually be liking it, not just like "god, I hope this works, only 6 more hours to go."
ghost 18 years ago
i have definately tried to blow people up in traffic and then realized that I was not master chief and that i had traded my rocket launcher for a gear shifter :(damn
ty for the info
O.S.
ghost 18 years ago
<add on> wish life had integrated find function like firefox that highlighted the thing u wanna find</add on>
ghost 18 years ago
**REALLY **interesting read, and of course, very true to. And you're right, it's an obscure topic, but that's jsut a bigger reason to talk about it. Very nice article, I'm rating it as awesome! :D
ghost 18 years ago
does it go away after time? i remember after one VERY lond CS binge i attacked someone coz i heard them behind me. and then after i had them on the ground i heard "counter-terrorists win" in my head… lol
ghost 18 years ago
I used to play guitar hero really hard core and when I would close my eyes I would see the frets rolling down that I would need to hit. I stopped playing the game for a few days and it went away. SAme happened to me when I was 12 and played the pokemon games. The music would get stuck in my head.
ghost 18 years ago
Lol i found myself imaginin to press arrow keys when sitting in passenger seat of car, after I'd spent all day playing gta… felt really nerdy. great article ^_^
ghost 18 years ago
wow, This is VERY true! Although it is not a big deal I sometimes want to change the volume on my speaker(located to my left) and I find myself trying to turn it with the mouse pointer! My girlfriend has pointed this out to me a few times…and I feel awkward. I get so mad when the pointer doesn't come of my screen…lmao:D