Cambridge Acorn Project update
When we talk about the fact that we use the game Tetris therapeutically we are often met with slightly blank looks. However, there is now a substantial amount of peer-reviewed evidence which highlights that playing Tetris – in a particular way – is an effective way of intervening after a traumatic event or experience (e.g. Holmes et al. 2009; Lyadurai et al. 2018). There is a nice survey/summary here (https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/news/tetris-used-to-prevent-post-traumatic-stress-symptoms), and a powerful post by a blogger here (though, as a word of caution, this does contain a bit of swearing!): https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid06g98k89B8WAhohZyHQWoPUYdLrc2wBwi7PxjyLqw22BZ4Ps1zhdLDrj5TWEJgSjil&id=100050427672319. There are some very interesting scientific theories and ideas behind this work – not least the theory of reconsolidation.
Reconsolidation theory suggests that even longstanding memories can be rendered ‘labile’ – effectively, malleable – when retrieved, particularly under safe conditions, although the findings, whilst promising, are not without academic controversy and dispute (e.g. Tronson and Taylor 2007). Playing a video game such as Tetris is speculated to be a safe, as well as scientifically promising (since it involves the visuo-spatial cortex which is implicated in memory retrieval) (Schiller et al. 2013). We are also interested in whether playing other games (such as a building a safe space in Minecraft) is also a safe and effective way of helping children, young people and adults recall distressing events which are naturally highly difficult things to talk about.
You can view a video below that explains a bit more about this and our motivations for wanting to develop a Tetris project further. From a healthcare inequalities point of view, two of the key things which we wanted to address through the project were highlighted by the original authors of the Tetris studies – firstly, early, and safe, intervention following a traumatic event and, secondly, an intervention which children and young people could have access to support across the week and ‘beyond the therapy room’ as both children and adults are often faced with trauma symptoms out ‘in the world’ and these can be highly debilitating and obstruct personal freedom.
Through previous projects, we now have an initial promising, if limited, dataset for the effectiveness of playing Tetris to manage distressing memories and/or more generalised stress. For example, using Subjective Units of Distress Scales (SUDS), we found that 66% of respondents reported a reduction in distress through playing Tetris from the beginning of the session to the end. However, we are now looking to move the project on to the next level and this is what we have been working on since being given this funding over the summer. Firstly, we are looking to develop a private space on our website so that children and families can access this across the week and securely – we have been ‘storyboarding’ this and I have posted an image of this below – not exactly of the standard of Hollywood blockbusters unfortunately! Secondly, we are looking to develop some focus groups in two local secondary schools for the autumn term to help us determine where young people would like us to go with this intervention next and the most helpful format for them to access it moving forwards. We are hoping that there will be an intervention component to this as well, although this is not confirmed yet. We will aim to report further on these elements in our next blog entry in October. Thank you for reading and please get in touch if you have any questions – matt@cambridgeacornproject.org.uk.