Enhancing adolescent reasoning skills through a video game program

Much research has been done on the benefits of video games in a physical education context (Camunas-Vega & Alcaide-Risoto, 2020; Fang et al., 2020). However, little attention has so far been paid to the effectiveness of commercial video games combined with actual basketball practice in helping students improve their reasoning skills (Chuang et al., 2021; Rogers et al., 2020). The study presents a quasi-experimental pre-post design with a control group in order to evaluate the impact of a specific training program in reasoning with the video game NBA 2K16. A convenience sample of 215 high school students participated in the study. Three reasoning subscales of the Evalua-9 psycho-pedagogical test (inductive alpha = 0.88; deductive alpha = 0.85; spatial alpha = 0.89) were used for data collection. Our findings show a significant moderate effect in the students who participated in the training program. An additional outcome was that sex differences in spatial and deductive reasoning in the pre-test disappeared in the post-test. We discuss the educational implications of the use of the video game as the main learning tool to enhance the reasoning process of Secondary Education students in Physical Education.

Automated summary

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of combining commercial video games with actual basketball practice in improving students' reasoning skills. The findings show a significant moderate effect in the students who participated in the training program. Additionally, sex differences in spatial and deductive reasoning disappeared in the post-test. The study discusses the educational implications of using video games as the main learning tool to enhance the reasoning process of secondary education students in physical education.