Abstract

Psychomotor skills are a combination of innate abilities as well as skills developed because of repeated actions. Researchers have dedicated many studies to understand the extent to which past videogame play contributes to psychomotor skills and fine motor control dexterity. However, not all gamers are created equal. With today's proliferation of platforms, many people are gamers who never pick up a controller. Grouping all gamers together forms dangerous confounds when trying to generalize across a population as diverse as today's gamers. The current study aims to study a population comprised only of gamers to see if there are significant differences in their psychomotor skills. A psychomotor skills test has been developed, which is designed to simulate proven physical tests, with the express purpose of exposing differences between gamers. After filling out an extensive survey of gaming habits, participants completed the psychomotor skills test. Participants were then grouped by measured psychomotor ability and a selection of high and low performing gamers completed four tutorial exercises on the dV-Trainer by Mimic Technologies, a validated robotic laparoscopic training device. The study shows that the number of hours reported per week using analog controllers is correlated with the psychomotor score as measured by the newly developed simulation. In particular, the Purdue Pegboard and Finger Tapping simulation software is the best discriminator among members of the gamer population.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2018

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Hughes, Charles

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Degree Program

Modeling and Simulation

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0007316

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0007316

Language

English

Release Date

December 2018

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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