Tetris Effect - II

The Tetris effect can occur with other video games, with any prolonged visual task (such as classifying cells on microscope slides, weeding, picking or sorting fruit, flipping burgers, driving long distances, or playing chess or cards), and in other sensory modalities. For example, there is the tendency for a catchy tune to play out unbidden in one's mind (an earworm). In kinesthesis, a person newly on land after spending long periods at sea may move with an unbidden rocking motion, having become accustomed to the ship making such movements (known as sea legs or mal de debarquement). Computer programmers and developers sometimes have similar experiences, and report dreaming about code when they sleep at night, and return to work the next day feeling like they had never left. People have also experienced this effect after playing music games with scrolling notes, such as Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Band, or beatmania IIDX. Fans of the game Polarium have had images of tiles being overturned in their mind, or feeling as though they needed to be overturned. After playing bullet hell games, many players have reported that looking at small objects, such as letters on the page of a book, appear to be moving around or swirling in patterns. Also the Rubik's Cube may make a person imagine turning the sides and the colours in their minds after playing it for a prolonged period of time.

Place in memory

Stickgold et al. (2000) have proposed that Tetris imagery is a separate form of memory, likely related to procedural memory. This is from their research in which they showed that people with anterograde amnesia, unable to form new declarative memories, reported dreaming of falling shapes after playing Tetris during the day, despite not being able to remember playing the game at all. A recent Oxford study (2009) suggests Tetris-like video games may help prevent the development of traumatic memories. If the video game treatment is played soon after the traumatic event, the preoccupation with Tetris shapes is enough to prevent the mental recitation of traumatic images, thereby decreasing the accuracy, intensity, and frequency of traumatic reminders. "We suggest it specifically interferes with the way sensory memories are laid down in the period after trauma and thus reduces the number of flashbacks that are experienced afterwards," summarizes Dr. Emily Holmes, who led the study.

History of the term

According to Earling (1996), one of the first references to the term is by Garth Kidd in February, 1996. Kidd described "after-images of the game for up to days afterwards" and "a tendency to identify everything in the world as being made of four squares and attempt to determine 'where it fits in'". Kidd attributed the origin of the term to computer-game players from Adelaide, Australia.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect