ReviewNature human behaviour2024
Using games to understand the mind.
Review in Nature human behaviour, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Naturalistic assessments across the lifespan: Systematic review of inhibition measures in ecological settings.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Article
- Towards naturalistic social neuroscience: A multi-level framework integrating real-world phenotyping, neurobiology, and computational mechanisms.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Article
- cpm: A python library for theory-driven modelling in computational psychiatry.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Decoding Naturalistic Episodic Memory with Artificial Intelligence and Brain-Machine Interface.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- The Robustness of Anchoring in a Naturalistic VR-Based Task.Cognitive science · 2026Article
- App-based epidemic game in a university campus reveals how risk perception and behavioral interventions shape disease transmission dynamics.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The emergence of trust under conditions of distrust.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Cognitive modeling of real-world behavior for understanding mental health.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2026Review
- Tracking Flow in Real Time: Continuous Measurement of Game-Induced Flow in Virtual Reality.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Review
- Human foraging strategies flexibly adapt to resource distribution and time constraints.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Addressing low statistical power in computational modelling studies in psychology and neuroscience.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Beyond the dichotomy between controlled and naturalistic paradigms: modeling psychological constructs in cognitive neuroscience.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Multi-agent game theory for precision psychiatry.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- From symptom-based heterogeneity to mechanism-based profiling in youth ADHD: the promise of computational psychiatry.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Video game engines as the new "virtual" Skinner box.Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior · 2026Article
- Large-scale community study reveals information sampling drives fairness decisions.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Continuous dynamics of cooperation and competition in social decision-making.Communications psychology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
28 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Board, card or video games have been played by virtually every individual in the world. Games are popular because they are intuitive and fun. These distinctive qualities of games also make them ideal for studying the mind. By being intuitive, games provide a unique vantage point for understanding the inductive biases that support behaviour in more complex, ecological settings than traditional laboratory experiments. By being fun, games allow researchers to study new questions in cognition such as the meaning of 'play' and intrinsic motivation, while also supporting more extensive and diverse data collection by attracting many more participants. We describe the advantages and drawbacks of using games relative to standard laboratory-based experiments and lay out a set of recommendations on how to gain the most from using games to study cognition. We hope this Perspective will lead to a wider use of games as experimental paradigms, elevating the ecological validity, scale and robustness of research on the mind.
Indexed as
Identifiers
38907029What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.