'There's a gaping hole in our knowledge': the scientists studying why gamers invert their controls

[Northerner]

It is one of the most contentious aspects of video game playing – a debate where opposing sides literally cannot see each other’s perspective. When the Guardian ran an article asking why a large minority of game players invert the Y axis on their controls – meaning that they push their joypad’s thumb stick down to move upwards on the screen – the response was huge. Hundreds of comments vociferously arguing why axis inversion was the only way to navigate a game world, and hundreds more incredulously arguing the opposite.

The purpose of the article was to discover reasons for this dichotomy in visual perception. Was axis inversion just a habit picked up from playing flight simulators or did it point to fundamental differences in how people perceive themselves in virtual worlds? There was no conclusion, but the argument raged on Twitter for days.

Now, one of the scientists interviewed for that article, Dr Jennifer Corbett, co-head of the Visual Perception and Attention Lab at Brunel University London, is taking the matter further. Inspired by the ensuing debate, she and colleague Dr Jaap Munneke have begun an exploratory study looking into the science behind controller inversion. With backgrounds in vision science and cognitive neuroscience, Corbett and Munneke have employed a variety of research methods, from neuro-imaging to computational modelling to psychophysics, in their previous work. Now, with the help of seven psychology students, they will be running remote behavioural and psychophysical experiments using volunteer gamers aged between 18 and 35.

'There's a gaping hole in our knowledge': the scientists studying why gamers invert their controls

Our article asking why so many players invert their controls provoked a fierce debate that has now caught the attention of researchers into visual perception

www.theguardian.com

Interesting bit of non-covid news 🙂

 

[trophywench]

Well unless you are in the business of employing people to make use of it - eg doing virtual brain surgery to remove tumours before being let loose on real ones - for what reason does anyone 'need' to know this info?

What actually IS the need?

Admittedly I never needed to know that frogs could get athlete's foot yet I still read that in a book of Useless Information when I was about 12, so still know that they can as my brain wasn't too full or old to absorb it. At least the title of the book was truthful though and forewarned me I'd never need the info.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

What actually IS the need?

I suspect they're just curious. (Maybe someone will think of something beyond obvious things (like how better to design such interfaces) but if there's some reason for the difference that they can find, that would be interesting.)

(As one comment says, Apple made a change a few years ago to default scrolling behaviour which may be related. Back in ancient times when we used a mouse with a scrolling wheel, typically you pushed up on the wheel to move what's on the screen down. The intuition is that it's like there's paper underneath the wheel and to move it down you'd want to push the top of the wheel up. Anyway, for a touchpad (where you scroll by moving two fingers) Apple inverted it (and maybe they did the same with wheeled mice too, I forget); I think most people adapted quickly but there's still an option to invert it back so presumably some people prefer it the other way around.
It's also possible that this preference is due to some quite different reason, which would also be interesting (though quite likely just as useless).)

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

I had exactly the same when moving away from Windows laptops some years ago @Bruce Stephens when Mac OS introduced ‘natural scroll’. Took a week or two to get used to, but feels completely instinctive now.

I’ve seen documentaries where people wear ‘inversion’ headsets as an experiment which swap their eyes over so that everything is ‘upside down’ (anyone who did biology/physics at school will smile wryly as of course the image on our retinas is ALREADY upside down and the brain flips it round). Didn’t take long for the headset wearers to adapt to perceive things the ‘right’ way.

The brain really is amazing!

 

[Drummer]

My husband comes in barking orders about things to do on the PC - and he always gets angry when I go the wrong way when he says to scroll up or down.
With joysticks - well I blame all those Biggles books I read whilst at school.