PLAYING GAMES TO SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF VISUOSPATIAL ABILITIES

An experiment is presented in which several digital entertainment games were selected and used with primary school students to foster the development of visuospatial skills. The experiment is part of a group of research aimed at studying whether and how game based activities foster basic skills needed for STEM studies. According to our initial hypothesis, training visuospatial skills via digital gameplay should have a positive impact on the students' school results in math, measured with a standardised test. Results confirmed the hypothesis: students who systematically played the games as part of their school activities reached statistically higher results in maths when compared to others from the same school who simply followed the normal school activities. The project has also yielded indications for future research, showing that students are much more interested and involved in those activities that are more creative and leave then more freedom.