The Cognition of Game Playing: Learning Cognitive Psychology by Playing Board Games

Board Game Academics, June 2026
Published in Vol 3. Issue II.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70380/n5x8c2v7b1m4l

Stephen B. Blessing
University of Tampa

Abstract

Experiential learning is a powerful way to learn new material, resulting in students acquiring the material more deeply than traditional lecture and other techniques. This paper describes an introductory cognitive psychology course in which the content is illustrated using off-the-shelf board games. Experiencing the course material in this way allows students to reflect on the cognitive principles discussed and appreciate how these principles apply in interactive, real-world settings. Most class sessions start with a game that illustrates the day’s topic, with the rest of the class building upon that illustration, in addition to the more typical experiments and demonstrations that occur in an introduction to cognitive psychology classroom. Board games are also used in “Game Days” in which students spend a good portion of the class day playing a game, and then use the remainder of the time to write an analysis of the cognitive processes required to play the game. Lastly, as a final project, students create a game, reflecting on the cognitions used in its play as well. 

Keywords: cognitive psychology, experiential learning, board games

Experiential Learning

Educators, learning scientists, and cognitive psychologists have long known that experiential learning—“learning by doing”—is an effective educational process (Dewey, 1938; Morris, 2019). Having learners engage in activities that are authentic to the concepts and skills to be learned greatly enhances the learning process. The practice of apprenticeship training hinges on this idea. A young person apprentices with a master and, by not only observing but also practicing the skills to be learned, is inculcated into the profession. This method of learning, of getting one’s hands dirty, so to speak, is a powerful method not only for trade skills like electrician, plumber, or welder, but also for more academic skills as well. For example, students in a statistics class learn best not by doing rote hand calculations on made-up data sets, but rather by experiencing real data analyzed using authentic tools like R or SPSS. This is what statisticians actually do, so learning these hands-on skills assists statistics students in learning the material and gives them a greater appreciation of the field. 

A variety of different experiential learning techniques have been developed and shown to be successful, such as service learning (Bringle & Hatcher, 1996), project-based learning (Hung et al., 2008), simulations and role-playing (Barrera et al., 2021), and the flipped classroom (Awidi & Paynter, 2019). The main common denominator among these methods is that they involve students becoming active participants in the learning process, either by getting them out of the classroom and into real-world situations which demonstrate the course content (service learning) or, in the case of the others listed, by having students engage in authentic problem-solving inside the classroom, where the instructor guides the learning and serves as a resource to the students, as opposed to being the sole information provider. In many cases, the learners drive the educational process as much as the instructor does during these exercises.

For the rest of this paper, I consider a type of experiential learning for students taking cognitive psychology. After providing some description as to what the field of cognitive psychology encompasses, the discussion turns to how game playing might be used to teach students this discipline. I describe a particular course that I have taught for several semesters which does exactly that: teach students cognitive psychology by playing off-the-shelf board games. The conclusion considers lessons learned from my experience with this course.

What is Cognitive Psychology?

Psychology itself is the scientific study of human thought and behavior (Feist & Rosenberg, 2022). It became a distinct discipline in the late 1800’s as physiologists, philosophers, and others desired to investigate these aspects of being human in a more rigorous, systematic way. As currently practiced, psychology is comprised of subdisciplines looking at the full range of human behavior, from how humans behave in groups (social psychology) to how the human body supports behavior and thought (biopsychology) to how to assess and treat mental and emotional disorders (counseling and clinical psychology). 

As another subfield of psychology, cognitive psychology applies the scientific method to study how the mind processes information (Kellogg, 2015). This encompasses how information comes into cognitive awareness via the sensory and perceptual system, how that information is remembered across time, and how that information is ultimately used to navigate this world by solving problems and making decisions. Researchers in cognitive psychology test theories of how the mind works, employing a number of traditional methodologies such as reaction time studies, error rates, verbal and video protocols, plus newer techniques such as MRI and PET scans. Cognitive psychologists have developed several theories concerning human information processing, such as Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory (Treisman & Gelade, 1980), Baddeley’s Working Memory Model (Baddeley, 2020), Schema Theory (Bobrow & Norman, 1975), and Kahneman and Tversky’s reasoning heuristics (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Discussing and learning these theories and how they apply to real-world settings form the backbone of an introduction to cognitive psychology course. 

“You put game playing in my cognitive psychology!”¹

The concepts within psychology in general, and cognitive psychology in particular, allow them to be demonstrated using a variety of active learning techniques. For example, many psychological experiments lend themselves to being modified and tested within the context of a class. Taking a few minutes to perform an experiment that has been adapted to classroom use, collecting the data from the students, and then comparing it to the published findings is a powerful way to learn about some of these concepts. The typical instructor in cognitive psychology uses a variety of these sorts of demonstrations across the semester.  One classic example is the serial position effect from memory (Ebbinghaus, 1913): the fact that people remember the first and last items from a list much better than the middle items. The effect hinges on the interplay between working memory and long-term memory. In a short classroom demonstration, the instructor can read a list of words, collect the data as to how often students remembered each word, and then plot the data, which almost invariably show the expected U-shaped pattern. As I have done this experiment and others over the years, I often think that these experiences have a bit of a game feel to them. From the student’s perspective, they are testing themselves to see how well they do, and the instructor is holding their breath to see if the class’s results look like the expected results. Regardless of whether the students see them as a game, these demonstrations help engage the class and offer experiential learning to understand these abstract concepts. 

Many teachers in a variety of disciplines have used actual games to illustrate different aspects of their instructional content, such as foreign language learning (Poole et al., 2019), math (Ramani, 2012), science (Othman & Ching, 2024), and history (Reynaud & Northcote, 2014).  In various measures, some combination of the theme and mechanics of the games used in these ways relates to some aspect of the content (e.g., the words or culture learned in a foreign language game) or procedures (e.g., how to use a number line in a math game) of the course. In this manner, they serve as excellent experiential learning activities for the class.

In using game playing to teach cognitive psychology, the focus is not on either theme or mechanism, but rather on how the cognitive system interacts with the game. That is, it is the act of playing the game, not the game itself or even its mechanism, that illustrates the to-be-learned cognitive psychology principles. In this way, it is perhaps more similar to how some instructors use games to teach computational thinking (e.g., Kuo & Hsu, 2019; also, see Hoard, this volume, discussing how playing games might reveal aspects of the unconscious in a psychanalytic setting). When a person plays a game, many different aspects of their cognition come to bear. These vary in kind and degree depending on the game, but most games require the player to perceive and attend to the elements of the game, remember those elements across time, and then to reason and make decisions as to what move to make within the game. These all illustrate fundamental elements of cognition, and as such, could be used to explain and explore concepts within cognitive psychology. This goes beyond doing a memory demonstration in class, as the demonstration at some level is the concept or experiment you are discussing, but a game illustrates the concept at a level above the actual experiment or demonstration. Having students reflect on this process, this act of playing, may be more powerful than a demonstration that closely mimics the original experiment. 

For example, Codenames (Chavátil, 2015) can be used to illustrate the associative nature of how items are stored in long-term memory, an important topic within cognitive psychology (Anderson, 1996). As you play Codenames, the clue giver must provide one word that is related to a number of other words on the board. When hearing that clue, the other players must then consider how closely that clue matches the visible words. Good clues are ones that provide a tight link (or, in the parlance of cognitive psychology, a high activation) between the provided clue and the words that the players should pick. The act of playing the game illustrates this somewhat abstract notion of activation and its spread across long-term memory items, thereby making the concept more meaningful and real to students.  

The Cognition of Game Playing Course

Course Structure. The Cognition of Game Playing is a 200-level course, meaning that the only prerequisite is our introductory course, General Psychology. It introduces cognitive psychology, and as such, fulfills a distribution requirement for the major in which all Psychology Majors must take at least one course in the cognitive discipline. We have five such cognitive courses total, including the more typical Introduction to Cognitive Psychology found in many psychology programs, which is a 300-level course. That course provides more detail into the theories of the domain, whereas The Cognition of Game Playing strives to be more application-driven, providing a lighter view of the theory, while still covering the breadth of cognitive psychology. The course meets on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule, where we take advantage of the longer class periods to delve into games, talk about them, in addition to learning about the subject matter. The typical class has 25 students. A sample syllabus and the Game Day and Final Project assignments discussed below can be downloaded (Blessing, 2025).

A Typical Day. As is typical in college classes, we take one or two days to cover each chapter in the text we use (Kellogg, 2015). On days in which we cover textbook content, we start class by playing a game that illustrates one of the main topics for the day. Table 1 provides a listing of the chapters we cover across the semester and some of the games I have used to illustrate them. These games tend to be ones I can teach the whole class quickly and that we can all play together. Either they are party games (like Taboo, Hersch, 1989, and Just One, Roudy & Sautter, 2018) or they are cheap enough that I have multiple sets (like Skull, Marly, 2011). We play for 10-15 min, perhaps not finishing the game, but long enough to allow people to experience the main idea. We then spend a few minutes talking about the game, paying particular attention to the cognitive processes and the way it is played. I then go into a typical discussion of the day’s topics, referring to that game whenever I can. The discussion also includes other active learning elements, such as the experiment demonstrations discussed previously. 

To illustrate this process, I will use the first game in Table 1, Doodle Dash (Buvarp et al., 2021). Doodle Dash is a variant of Pictionary (Angel, 1985), where instead of one drawer and multiple guessers, there is only one guesser and multiple drawers. The guesser closes their eyes, the rest of the players see a word, and they compete to see who can complete their doodle first. When the first drawer is done, everyone stops drawing (this is modified from the original rules of the game, to better accommodate classroom play). If the guesser gets it right from that first drawing, only that first doodler gets points. If they get it wrong, though, the guesser will see the doodles made by the other drawers. The process behind this game fits in nicely with one of the initial topics in a cognitive psychology course, the distinction between bottom-up and top-down processing, as commonly known, or what I like to describe as data-driven processing and knowledge-driven processing. In data-driven processing (i.e., bottom-up processing), the information comes from the outside world through our senses and then proceeds through a series of neural processing circuits. However, the data we get from the outside world is often imperfect or incomplete. Because of that, we also use knowledge-driven processing (or, top-down processing) that starts with previous knowledge we have learned to make sense of the imperfect and incomplete incoming data. It’s a fundamental aspect of cognitive processing that these two mechanisms assist us in figuring out the world. In real-world processing, it is never one or the other that’s entirely responsible for our cognition, but rather some combination. Understanding the differences between them is still important, and it is a topic that we come back to throughout the course. Students often struggle to understand the differences. Playing Doodle Dash and using the doodles they produce helps in student understanding. The doodles are the imperfect data we get from the outside world. The guesser will have to apply previous knowledge, to some extent, to hazard a guess as to what the doodle might be. In discussing this game in class, I will use the doodles produced by the students to illustrate these points throughout this discussion.

Game Days and Cognalyses. The semester has four game days set aside throughout its length in which students will get in small groups for the day and play a full game. At the end of playing the game, they will then collaboratively write a paper about their experience, specifically linking course concepts to the act of playing the game. I call these collaborative papers a “cognalysis” to emphasize what they are supposed to be doing: providing a cognitive analysis of what it takes to play that game, indicating the main cognitive processes used. These games have a bit more weight to them than the ones used on a typical day, in order to provide enough material to write a good cognalysis. I have used a variety of games throughout the different semesters on these game days. I will pick and rotate through games based on the cognitive processes involved in their play, student feedback, and as new games are released. Past games have included: Canvas (Chin & Nerger, 2021), Carcassonne (Wrede, 2000), Harmonies (Benvenuto, 2024), Love Letter (Kanai, 2012), River Valley Glassworks (Hill et al., 2024), Stay Cool (Sentis, 2019), Sushi Go! (Walker-Harding, 2013), and Wandering Towers (Kiesling & Kramer, 2022). With a class of 25 students, I will have five groups of four players and then one group of five, for a total of 6 different games being played on any given game day. The groups remain together for all four game days. To ensure that groups can get going quickly, prior to coming to class on a Game Day, students take a short rules quiz on their game. I make available the rules and a teaching video, and students can refer to these as they take the quiz.

I am directive about what I expect in a cognalysis: a) a 400+ word essay that quickly gives group’s overall impression of the game, b) a description of three different ways a person’s cognition comes into play during the game, and c) specificity and detail in one or two of these points, perhaps by connecting the point to a study that we discussed or comparing it to some other game. The group works on these together using Google Docs or some other means, and submits the assignment before they leave the classroom. It is very gratifying to see students talk about cognitive psychology in the context of these games as they work collaboratively to complete their cognalysis.

As a last aspect of this assignment, I designate one person in each group for each day as the Game Day Leader. This position rotates so that every person in class is the leader once during the semester. While every person knows the game before coming to the Game Day, I have found that having a leader who is responsible for setting up the game and making it run smoothly benefits everyone. I have the leader do a short reflection on this process as another assignment.  

Final Project. While not initially part of the course, students do a final project in which they create their own game. Early in teaching the course, the students asked when they would create a game. That was not part of the course at that time, but I scrapped the original final project (essentially an extended cognalysis) and created the present final project in which groups of 3-4 students create a game. They also write a report indicating what cognitive principles are used in the play of their game. On the last day of class, we play the different games the groups have made. Groups also produce a one-sheet that lists the rules of their game in addition to the cognitive principles. They display this one sheet as the other students play their game. In developing their game, I encourage students to think back over all the games we played across the semester and do a variation on one of them. Of course, they are also free to branch out on their own, though I do urge them not to get too complicated. This has developed into a wonderful capstone experience for the course, with some creative (and fun!) games over the years illustrating all the different cognitive principles discussed throughout the course. For example, some teams have devised games based on the simple childhood game of Memory, often creating versions that have clever mechanisms for how you draw your cards or manipulating the grid of cards to make things more challenging for the other players. They tie these manipulations into the different parts of Baddeley’s Working Memory (2020). Some teams have made other memory-style games that depend upon making semantic matches instead of exact matches. They then link their game to the associative nature of long-term memory as discussed previously. 

“You put cognitive psychology in my game playing!”

By embedding the learning of cognitive psychology into game playing, I hope I have created a class in which the learning of cognitive psychology concepts becomes more meaningful and personal than it would be otherwise. While I have no objective data that this course is more effective than a traditional introductory to cognitive psychology course, the subjective data (student course evaluations and class enrollment) suggest its success. In addition to the assignments discussed above, I give three rigorous exams throughout the semester, and these exams do not differ from those I would give in the more traditional course (that is, they focus on cognitive psychology principles and use questions from the middle levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy; Forehand, 2010). I cannot compare these exam results to students who have taken the same course minus the games from me, but their exam performance indicates they are learning the concepts to the degree I would hope. I believe, then, that this course teaches cognitive psychology at least as well as any other course that teaches the subject.

A real-world test of course effectiveness is if students think about the content after the course has ended. I tell students in another course I teach, Sensation and Perception, that I hope five years from now they see a meme (like “The Dress” or “Yanny v. Laurel”), watch or hear something beautiful, or have a friend or relative describe something that makes them think of course content. I then hope they appreciate that experience all the more because they can connect it back to something we talked about in our sensation and perception class. I hope the same in this course, that some experience in five years’ time, perhaps as direct as playing a game or maybe something like solving a home renovation problem, makes them think of the course content. I indicated above that the course evaluations, both the raw numbers and the individual student comments, indicate the success of the course in terms of students engaging in the content and enjoying the material in a way they might not without the games. The games enabled them to connect the principles to how they might apply in a real-world context in a way that typical in-class demos do not. As an anecdote to The Cognition of Game Playing course, I had a student who took the first iteration of this course come up to me some three years later. He reported to me that every time he plays a game now, he thinks about cognitive psychology. That is, he essentially does a cognalysis as he plays through the game. This is what I as a cognitive psychologist do when I play a game, and to have a student report they do likewise after taking my course meets the main goal I have for it. 

Final Thoughts

As discussed at the beginning, using games in this way implements active learning and other aspects of evidence-based instruction, but examining its effectiveness more closely would illuminate how best to do it in practice. While gathering actual effectiveness data might not be feasible at the course level (that is, have the same instructor teach one course of cognitive psychology in a more traditional way and also teach a cognitive psychology course as described here, using games). One approach could examine the effectiveness of using games to teach an individual concept. One could imagine developing a short module that teaches one topic, such as Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory (Treisman & Gelade, 1980). Two versions of the module could be created, one that teaches it the more traditional way with a demonstration of the theory (typically searching for a particular letter in a varied number of distractors, akin to the original experiment), and the other teaches it using what I do in class, by having the students play Spot It (Blanchot et al., 2009). An assessment could be done immediately after the module and then at a later time (e.g., two weeks later) to test for retention, to examine if a difference in learning takes place. Even if no difference exists in terms of retention, but the group that played Spot It enjoyed the instruction more, that should still be considered a success for this approach. 

Lastly, I encourage all instructors to consider incorporating game playing into their classes—not just for cognitive psychology instructors specifically, nor even psychology instructors more generally, but instructors of any subject. A colleague in my university’s College of Business uses economics-based games to teach aspects of finance. The literature has many examples of games being used to teach a variety of subjects. While it might not be feasible or desirable to construct a whole course using games throughout, an instructor could start by teaching one topic within a course using a game. That way they can test if it works for their teaching style and course, and perhaps expand the use of games from there.

Endnotes

1. For those too young to know the reference used in this pair of headings, please watch bit.ly/rpbcup (link directs to a YouTube video). ↩︎

Works Cited

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Baddeley, A. (2020). Working memory. Memory, 71-111.

Barrera, F., Venegas-Muggli, J. I., & Nuñez, O. (2021). The impact of role-playing simulation activities on higher education students’ academic results. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 58(3), 305-315.

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Beckett, B. & Stahl, J. (2018). dude. North Star Games, LLC.

Benvenuto, J. (2024). Harmonies. Libellud.

Blanchot, D., Cottereau, J., Gille-Naves, G., Polouchine, I. (2009). Spot It. Dobble.

Blessing, S. (2025). Syllabus and assignments for the course The Cognition of Game Playing (Version 1). figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.30350266.v1

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Table 1

Games Used to Illustrate Chapter Concepts

Chapter	Game
1. Introduction/History	Doodle Dash (Buvarp et al., 2021)
2. Perception	The Mind (Warsch, 2018)dude (Beckett & Stahl, 2018)
3. Attention	Egyptian Rat Screw (traditional card game)Spot It (Blanchot et al., 2009)
4. Memory Systems	Monikers (Hague & Vickers, 2015)
5. Remembering Events	That’s Not a Hat (Lapp, 2023)Wilmott’s Warehouse (Haggett et al., 2024)
6. Memory Distortions	Taboo (Hersch, 1989)Just One (Roudy & Sautter, 2018)
7. Imagery and Knowledge Representation	Dixit (Roubira, 2008)Concept (Beaujannot & Rivollet, 2013)
8. Language	Action Castle (Sorensen, 2018)
9. Problem Solving	Railroad Ink (Hach & Silva, 2018)
10. Decision Making	Skull (Marly, 2011)Wits and Wagers (Crapuchettes, 2005)