Airmen at Sheppard Air Force Base volunteered for a video game-playing study Friday and Saturday that will have implications for America's war fighters of the future.
"We are looking at commercial video games to see how they can impact learning, specifically, how they affect cognitive adaptability," said Dr. Shane Gallagher, a scientist with the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative, based in Alexandria, Va.
Gallagher said two groups of airmen between ages 18 and 24 at Sheppard played either the game "Portal 2" or standard Microsoft games to see whether "Portal 2" affects the airmen's ability to adapt to changing situations.
The airmen played the games over a two-day period for six hours each day and were tested on their cognitive adaptability before the game playing sessions, during breaks in game play, and after game play.
Gallagher said his team will compare the two groups to see whether playing "Portal 2," a puzzle and logic game, affects cognitive adaptability and how the airmen think it affects their thinking.
He said the results of the study will be used for the Department of Defense to train service members across military branches.
"We're looking at what type of design principles these games have that can be used for training war fighters in the future," Gallagher said. "We're looking at if there is value in using these types of games, because if it increases cognitive adaptability, it will also increase war fighter adaptability."
Gina Johnson, deputy director of Training Operations for the 82nd Training Wing at Sheppard, called the video game study exciting and said her office is constantly looking for tools that can be used to train airmen more effectively and efficiently.
She said the base assisted the learning initiative with volunteers in another study in 2010 and 2011 on using mobile devices for training.
"In our office we look at the future of training and where we need to go to make training more cost-effective," Johnson said. "We want to look at how do we teach them to be able to adapt to the changing world of war fighting."
She said Sheppard, with its large population of airmen-in-training, was an ideal location for the learning initiative to conduct the study.
She said Sheppard is the only base where the study will be conducted.
To keep the training tempo at the base intact, the study used permanent party airmen or airmen who have not started their training at Sheppard. A few dependents of military members participated."We didn't want to take any airmen out of training for this," Johnson said.
She said around 50 airmen performed 16 volunteer hours for the study, which prompted a few to sign up, including Senior Airman Brandon Larson, 24, from Atlanta.
"I got an email about it and thought it was just something different that I could do to help out," Larson said. "I've never seen a volunteer opportunity to play video games before."
Larson, who works in the base weather shop, said he plays video games in his spare time.
"I try to minimize the hours that I do play, but I normally play video games three to four times a week," Larson said.