A famous example of GTP is the 'Tetris effect' which occurs when people devote sufficient time and attention to an activity that it begins to overshadow their thoughts, mental images and dreams. People who play tetris for a prolonged amount of time may find themselves mentally arranging shapes seen in the real world, or dream about tetris blocks falling when falling asleep. It is proposed that the Tetris effect is linked to a type of memory known as the procedural memory (the memory for how to do things). It was also reported that people with anterograde amnesia, unable to form new declarative memories, had dreams of falling shapes after playing Tetris during the day, despite not being able to remember actually playing the game. It has also been suggested that people who frequently play action games often outperform non-gamers on measures of perception, cognition, complex hand-eye coordination tasks and their contrast sensitivity.
The study involved an in-depth interview with 42 Swedish participants aged between 15~21 who play video games for at least 10 hours a week. The interviews typically lasted for 40 to 60 minutes. The most common experiences found were:
- expressing a desire to resolve real-life issues using video game elements or as the character from a game would
- experiencing involuntary sensations to do things as one would in a game
- experiencing visual distortions
- associating visual stimuli with features from games
To conclude, the study does not provide enough evidence that GTP actually exists and whether violent video games really causes people to become more violent. However, next time you see someone throw a banana skin out of their car window, you'll know what's going on.
