The Tetris effect in video games

Many people know the wonderful video game Tetris, its simplicity and addiction has left a huge mark on time, allowing it to be experienced by new players, however, not many know that thanks to this game could be made tests that allowed to check certain actions after playing video games, this was called Tetris effect.

This effect originated through some studies that were carried out at Harvard School by Robert Stickgold, which consisted in seeing the effects caused by the video game Tetris after being played for certain hours for several days, selecting a group of people who some had experience with the video game and others did not.

After a few days of tests it was possible to identify that some people at the moment of sleeping could visualize the pieces of the video game forming lines, as if they were still playing in front of the screen, others by intuition looked for patterns between objects of the real life, trying to form lines or simply when closing the eyes they could still see the pieces of the video game falling.

This post-game effect was called the Tetris effect, which is more common in video games where there are multiple puzzles or in games where there are many patterns, including those related to strategy can also originate such effect.

This occurs because our brain is constantly learning about the video game we are playing, in the case of Tetris we repeat infinite times the same movements which allow us to make the goal of making horizontal lines, this is how we train our spatial ability to fit the pieces, making our brain respond faster the more we train.

By repeating the same pattern so many times our brain overtrains making that when we finish playing we intuitively seek to relate real life objects with the video game, ie, in the case of Tetris try to make horizontal lines joining any shape that seems.

Although it sounds a little disturbing, the Tetris effect has no danger, this is because after certain hours or a couple of days this will stop, as long as we take intervals of breaks for our mind to receive other information, that's why in some video games we can see ads where it indicates that it would be good to take a short break.

Here is the importance of knowing the effects produced by certain video games, a very clear example is Candy Crush, a very addictive game where we must find patterns to eliminate pieces, many people who spend too many hours playing seek in real life intuitively patterns, because their brain is trying to assimilate what they learned during the process of the game.

In conclusion, the Tetris effect is not bad, but video game addiction if, for that reason the parents or guardians should educate the youngest to know how to control their hours of play with rest intervals. Personally I have had this experience with certain video games, but doing other activities was passed without my knowledge because it is something that lasts in the very short term.