Game Flow

Flow is the multi-faceted holistic sensation in which individuals are fully engaged in certain activities.It is characterized by one's fluent consciousness and behaviors which are depend on automatic process.Meanwhile,the continuous and effective attention during flow also depend on controlled process.In addition,flow is a kind of positive emotional experience,which make individuals repeat certain activities in order to enjoy the task itself.Much research has focused on how to manipulate the precondition of flow,what is the phenomenological characteristics of flow,and its impact on other behaviors and emotions.However,few study has explored the essence of flow,which is why the skillchallenge balance induce flow experience.Cognitive load and performance were introduced to explore the flow in current study.The dissertation includes two studies in order to examined the factors of flow.In study 1,an adapted version of Tetris was used to explore the objective difficulty,the subjective difficulty and the target-feedback factors of flow.The results indicated:(1)flow was highest under the medium difficulty;(2)goal-feedback has a significant impact on flow;(3)the influence of goal-feedback on flow mainly occurs under medium and difficult condition.To further examine the influence of cognitive load's type and degree.Study 2 included three experiments: intrinsic cognitive load was manipulated by the diverse pattern of puzzle construction;extraneous cognitive load was manipulated by the complex color of game interface;germane resource was manipulated by the stage of learning schema.The results indicated:(1)flow was highest under moderate intrinsic cognitive load with high sense of control,concentration and positive emotion;(2)extraneous cognitive load has a positive effect on flow,which is reflected in the concentration and positive emotion;(3)germane resource also has a positive impact on flow which shows up in positive emotion.In addition,the study introduced performance as a mediator of intrinsic cognitive load and flow.The results indicated:(1)the comparison between medium and high intrinsic cognitive load has an impact on flow through the performance;(2)after schema learning,the reduced cognitive resources can effective moderate performance and improve flow;(3)extraneous cognitive load has a direct positive impact on flow.To sum up,current studies have verified the factors of flow from the surface to the center.The results also demonstrated that flow is restricted by internal factors such as individual level and individual performance,as well as external factors such as task situation and task difficulty.Flow is a kind of psychological state and experience with multiple aspects and flexibility.