Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Publication Date
Spring 5-1-2023
Journal
Undergraduate Honours Theses
Abstract
Gamification - the process of incorporating game-like elements (e.g., points, levels) into traditionally non-game domains - is a concept that has been increasingly commonplace over the past decade. In cognitive psychology, gamification has begun to be incorporated into research paradigms, particularly in the context of learning (e.g., language or music learning). Although research in this area is still nascent, initial results suggest that gamification may lead to significantly accelerated learning trajectories and improved generalisation of learning compared to more traditional paradigms, particularly in challenging domains (such as learning non-native speech sounds). The present experiment extends this gamification research to assess learning efficacy of absolute pitch (AP) – a notoriously difficult learning context in which listeners must categorise pitched sounds based on musical pitch class. We compared a gamified paradigm, in which listeners moved a spaceship on the screen to navigate through different “gates” associated with musical notes, to a more traditional paradigm, used in prior AP research, to assess performance for both the trained sounds (assessed via a “rote test”) and novel sounds that belonged to the same trained categories (assessed via a “generalisation test”). While the gamified paradigm led to significant learning in the rote test, performance in the generalisation test was on marginally above chance. In contrast, and contrary to the study’s predictions, the standard paradigm led to robust learning in both the rote and generalisation tests, with learning rates exceeding what has been reported in past studies. We offer that gamification allows us the vocabulary and concepts necessary to explain this discrepancy.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Notes
Thesis Advisor(s): Dr. Stephen Van-Hedger