Tetris effect: what it is and how it creates new ways of perceiving the world

Without a doubt, Tetris is one of the most popular video games that have been designed in the history of digital entertainment. When evoking its title, we can all visualize how its characteristic figures move to the sound of "Music A" (an arrangement in MIDI format of a song of Russian origin known as Korobeiniki).

Millions of children and adults from all over the planet have dedicated countless hours to it, because together with other icons (like the well-known Mario and Sonic), is part of the Olympus of a business area whose progression seems unstoppable.

This is such a well-known work that it has even given a name to a phenomenon of perception that follows being the subject of much research at the moment, but which we still seem to be far from understanding in its whole. It is none other, of course, than the tetris effect. Let's see what it consists of.

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What is the Tetris effect?

The human brain, like space or the ocean floor, is still a mystery to science. Despite the fact that we find ourselves in a time of fascinating developments, even today we continue to ignore the organ that lives inside our head, exactly the same one that we must use to discover it.

When it was first described, it was given a secondary role, placing the weight of conscience on the heart. Today, however, it is known that the brain is the organic support of everything we are, and that it is even capable of varying its form and its function to adapt to what we do (if there is any difference between "being" and "do").

Neural plasticity is a property of this organ that allows it to shape itself to efficiently distribute their own resources and adapt to the demands that different situations impose on them on a daily basis. Thus, both the structure and the activity of nervous tissues depend on what consumes our time. In this sense, habits are the architects of our thoughts and our actions, through their enormous potential to define information processing in the long term.

Science has tried to discover how certain activities change the structure of the brain, and the resonances of all this on cognitive functions such as memory and/or attention. Tetris has undoubtedly been the game that has been most frequently used in the literature for this purpose. In purely organic terms, some studies have shown that playing games increases the density of the gray matter in the temporal and prefrontal lobes, basic for higher order cognitive processes and memory or spatial vision.

From these findings, many other investigations were carried out to understand the effect of this "change" on cognitive dimensions. The literature indicates that incorporating Tetris into our habits can translate into an improvement in the processes of non-verbal learning, mental rotation of figures in two dimensions and the ability to reason in terms space. It is also likely that the practice has a positive impact on visual memory, and there are even studies that have considered it useful to reduce the intensity and frequency of flashbacks post-traumatic.

Despite this, most of these effects are still not definitively certified, nor is it known how long they would last if they existed.

All reviewed could be a consequence of plastic changes in the brain parenchyma, and would be potentially useful for the design of psychological intervention programs and neurological or neuropsychological rehabilitation.

Beyond the positive effects, however, there are also studies that have shown that playing this title for too long during a day can promote alterations in perception and in the various mechanisms that we use when processing the information coming from the organs of the senses. This is to such an extent that Tetris has become a whole research paradigm within cognitive psychology.

For this article, emphasis will be placed only on the last of such phenomena, which has been coined in the scientific literature (and in popular culture) as the Tetris effect. At the end, it will also detail how it extends to different contexts, since we know that it can also occur in other daily activities.

How is it expressed?

Tetris is a game that has the ability to "hook" its users, since it consists of simple and addictive mechanics. It consists of a succession of geometrically very simple pieces that move in a vertical scroll (from top to bottom). The role of the user is to stack them so that they fit together perfectly., taking into account its composition and without leaving empty spaces between any of them. When the task is carried out correctly, the system "rewards" us by eliminating the accumulation of pieces, since our final purpose is to avoid that they end up occupying the entire screen. At such time the session would end and a tally of the total score obtained would be made.

As time elapses without the game being finished, the speed of the game (and the accompanying music) speeds up, making progression more difficult. As it is intuited, the user remains with his gaze fixed during the game time, attentive to a procession of repetitive and constant stimuli. This is how the fundamental criteria for the effect at hand are reproduced, which we now turn to. describe by areas, and that could flood thought or intrude into the unfathomable world of our dreams. Even with everything, it should be noted that its effects occur for very short periods, and therefore are generally reversible.

1. Perception of reality

An effect that some users describe after playing Tetris for a long time is that your way of perceiving reality changes somehow. The descriptions on this issue coincide in pointing out that a "transfer" of the task that is required during the game to real life, in which the objects that form it become more polygonal and simple.

Despite the fact that they continue to be captured in exactly the same way through the sense organs, their characteristics change over time. processing of its properties, emphasizing the outline of its global silhouette and ignoring the details (cubes, rectangles, circles, etc.). etc.).

The person is still able to perceive the details of the object, but with a kind of exacerbated awareness of its elemental polygonality. As a direct result of all this, he usually tries to imagine how his surroundings could "fit or adjust", transferring the habits acquired in the game to his own real life. The most common is that the horizon becomes perceived as the tower of pieces of Tetris, and that the outline of the elements that are around is scrutinized to determine how they could be assembled. The same can also happen in the organization of the elements of a house, or in the parking spaces that are reserved for vehicles.

In some cases, the person could even surprise themselves trying to stack the objects around them. much like you would in a Tetris game. In this assumption, the perceptual changes would have their resonance on the behavior. Fortunately, it is not the most common.

2. Intrusion

In addition to the above, some Tetris users point out that, after having been playing for several hours, they continue to perceive the movement of the pieces despite having finished the game.

It is common for this sensation, which is labeled a ghost image, to increase when the eyes are closed. or we find ourselves in dark places (where any visual reference to the environment is lost). The characteristic game music could also remain, being heard in a "loop" even though it is no longer in the perceptual field. It is for this reason that in the scientific literature on this matter it has been considered a form of hallucination, despite the clear awareness of its mental origin.

Finally, some people also end up dreaming of the Tetris pieces falling over and over again, without end or purpose, the inertia of habit dragging themselves to the same dream scene.

Causes

The Tetris Effect occurs as a direct result of prolonged and repetitive exposure to a specific activity, to which a significant effort has been directed in the hours prior to its irruption. It is common after very long work days in which the visual field was reduced to a pattern of stimuli simple and of repetitive presentation or, under the assumption that concerns us, after a marathon or excessive game at own game.

In any case, it seems to be an alteration in the processing of information that is due to habits that have been established in everyday life, to the point of ending up mixing with everyday life in an intrusive and/or parasitic way.

Appearance of this psychological phenomenon in other contexts

Any activity of our day to day that tends to unfold in a prolonged manner, and whose characteristics are extremely simple and repetitive, it is likely to cause effects similar to those described for the Tetris. Despite the fact that the phenomenon was popularized from the game, alludes to a reality of human processing that extends beyond it and that reproduces before stimuli that harbor the indicated qualities.

Thus, who is dedicated to writing could be invaded by lines of text on the white background of the computer, and who works as a cook could keep the vision of his work table even when entering the bed.

The stimuli that trigger it are, therefore, enormously varied. And in any case, they will describe the way in which the human brain adheres to habits and behaviors. possible underlying neuroplastic effects (which remain unknown in much).