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Toward Understanding the Effects of Cognitive Styles on Collaboration in Multiplayer Games

Sultan Alharthi, George Raptis, Christina Katsini, Igor Dolgov, Lennart Nacke, and Zachary Toups. 2018. Toward Understanding the Effects of Cognitive Styles on Collaboration in Multiplayer Games. In Companion of the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing - CSCW '18. Jersey City, NJ, USA. ACM, 169-172. doi:10.1145/3272973.3274047

PDF DOI BibTeX

@inproceedings{Alharthi:2018:TUE:3272973.3274047,
 author = {Alharthi, Sultan A. and Raptis, George E. and Katsini, Christina and Dolgov, Igor and Nacke, Lennart E. and Toups, Zachary O.},
 title = {Toward Understanding the Effects of Cognitive Styles on Collaboration in Multiplayer Games},
 booktitle = {Companion of the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing},
 series = {CSCW '18},
 year = {2018},
 isbn = {978-1-4503-6018-0},
 location = {Jersey City, NJ, USA},
 pages = {169--172},
 numpages = {4},
 url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3272973.3274047},
 doi = {10.1145/3272973.3274047},
 acmid = {3274047},
 publisher = {ACM},
 address = {New York, NY, USA},
 keywords = {cognitive styles, collaboration, multiplayer games, planning, team formation, teams, user study},
}

Abstract

In multiplayer games, players need to coordinate action to succeed. This paper investigates the effect of cognitive styles on performance of dyads engaged in collaborative gaming activities. 24 individuals took part in a mixed methods user-study; they were classified as field dependent (FD) or independent (FI) based on a cognitive style elicitation instrument. Three groups of teams were formed, based on the cognitive style of each team member: FD-FD, FD-FI, FI-FI. We examined performance in terms of game completion time, cognitive load, and player experience. The analysis revealed that FD-FI cognitive style had an effect on the performance and the mental load. We expect the findings to provide useful insight for practitioners and researchers on improving team collaboration in different contexts, such as learning, eSports, and disaster response.