In the Zone: Applying Three-Step Method to Introduce Flow State - Literature review Example

Leonidas King Dr. Corbett English 302 June In the Zone: Rhetorical Analysis of a Three-Step Method to Introduce Flow Introduction In 1990, a researcher named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi asked people all over the world, from Japan to Europe, to describe what it felt like when their lives were at their fullest and when they did the activity they found most enjoyable. The answers showed a common trend: they would enter a period of concentration so intense that they lost track of the world around them, a feeling so rewarding that they put a lot of time and effort into feeling it again. This sensation is known as the flow state, a term penned by Csikszentmihalyi 15 years before when investigating people who performed difficult tasks, like rock climbing or playing a musical instrument, for little to no obvious reward. After much study, Csikszentmihalyi determined that there were eight main factors that comprised a flow state: an achievable goal, concentration, clear goals, immediate feedback, a sense of control, deep but effortless involvement, lack of self-concern, and the experience of time dilation. In addition, accomplishing the goal must have an element of challenge well-matched to the person’s skills. When all of these elements are present together, people lose their sense of self in this period of deep concentration, and re-emerge from it with a stronger sense of self and a deeper satisfaction in life. Game designers are particularly interested in this flow state, as it’s the reason why people find playing video games to be so rewarding. However, game design is a broad, interdisciplinary field involving artists, programmers, and researchers. As a result, when discussing flow theory to other people within the industry, it’s often necessary to introduce the concept from scratch. This is especially prominent in academic journals, where people outside the game industry read the articles, often having no experience with flow theory whatsoever. These introductions to flow theory often share a common three-step method: establishing the credibility of flow theory; introducing the components of flow state; and relating flow state to their work. This paper will analyze why this three-step model is effective at introducing readers to flow state, the variations in the implementation of this model across several papers, and how the purpose of a paper is easily linked to flow state in this model through four academic papers: GameFlow: A Model for Evaluating Player Enjoyment in Games, by Penelope Sweetser and Peta Wyeth; Digital game-based learning: Towards an experiential gaming model, by Kristian Kiili; A person–artefact–task (PAT) model of flow antecedents in computer-mediated environments, by Christina M. Finneran and Ping Zhang, and The concept of flow in collaborative game-based learning, by Wilfried Admiraal, Jantina Huizenga, Sanne Akkerman, and Geert ten Dan. Antecedents: Building Credibility                 Perhaps the most important step in introducing flow theory is introducing its credibility. While many scholars work with flow theory, many more have never heard of it before, and may be skeptical of its validity. Therefore, the authors must begin by establishing an ethos, not for them, but for Csikszentmihalyi’s work. By doing so, the authors enhance their own ethos by associating themselves with Csikszentmihalyi, and by persuading people to accept the basis of their paper. Csikszentmihalyi’s ethos can be established by showing the process he went through to create flow theory, by showing the work other scholars have done on the topic, and by using Csikszentmihalyi’s or the author’s diction to elicit a response of authority. In GameFlow: A Model for Evaluating Player Enjoyment in Games, Sweetser and Wyeth outline the methods by which player enjoyment in games can be described with flow theory. As the paper hinges heavily upon the credibility of flow theory, it places extra effort into establishing its credibility. From the very first line, Sweetser and Wyeth establish a strong ethos for Csikszentmihalyi: Csikszentmihalyi [1990] conducted extensive research into what makes experiences enjoyable, based on long interviews, questionnaires, and other data collected over a dozen years from several thousand respondents. This sentence does two things. First, it acts as a powerful hook to invest the reader in Csikszentmihalyi. The mention of the amount of work he went through to create this theory grabs the reader’s interest and makes Csikszentmihalyi sympathetic. Second, it establishes the scope of Csikszentmihalyi’s work. The use of hard facts that establish the time frame over which data was collected, the magnitude of the number of people involved, and the depth of information gathered from these individuals represent a strong appeal to logos, showing scientific dedication and rigor. These appeals to pathos and logos create an unassailable ethos for Csikszentmihalyi, forming a strong basis for the paper.                 By contrast, in Digital game-based learning: Towards an experiential gaming model, Kiili establishes flow theory as respectable not by describing Csikszentmihalyi’s work, but by citing other authors heavily. When describing the components of flow theory to the reader, he cites sources no less than 14 times in the same paragraph, from 6 unique authors. The dense packing of citations throughout the paragraph indicate to the reader that many authors have written about flow theory, establishing it as an extensively researched field. Kiili establishes his own ethos at the same time, showing the breadth of his reading on the subject. In contrast to Sweetser and Wyeth’s paper, this strategy supplies ethos with fewer words, but sacrifices appeals to pathos. Another common method is the use of diction to establish ethos. In both A person–artefact–task (PAT) model of flow antecedents in computer-mediated environments by Finneran and Zhang and The concept of flow in collaborative game-based learning, by Admiraal et al., the authors use word choice and diction in establishing credibility, though in very different ways. Instead of describing Csikszentmihalyi’s process or showing that flow was a widely studied topic, Finneran and Zhang establish both their credibility and that of Csikszentmihalyi by showing Csikszentmihalyi’s diction. Beginning with the sentence, “Flow, the ‘holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement,’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) was first identified by Csikszentmihalyi when he studied chess players, rock climbers, and dancers (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975).” Finneran and Zhang immediately establish ethos. The language used by Csikszentmihalyi in the quote is very precise; the use of key terms like “holistic sensation” and “total involvement” and similar terms throughout the text such as “autotelic nature” show a precise and diverse word choice.  This is the language of a serious scholar, convincing the reader of Csikszentmihalyi’s expertise. By establishing context directly after this quote, figuratively in the same breath, Finneran and Zhang demonstrate their familiarity with Csikszentmihalyi’s work, and establish their ethos as serious academics.                 Admiraal et al., on the other hand, use their ethos to support Csikszentmihalyi’s. Throughout the section, they use precise word choice, such as “intrinsic,” “scaffolding,” and “symbiotic,” and terms like “selective mechanism into psychological functioning that fosters growth.” While much of the audience is unlikely to understand every term referenced, the way the authors blunder straight from one high level concept to the next leaves little doubt in any reader’s mind that they are serious scholars. The authors present a very erudite image that gives flow theory ethos based on its association with them, not the other way around. Their ethos is enough to support Csikszentmihalyi’s claims and give their own enough weight to be seriously considered. This tactic, while effective, obscures the meaning of the paper by littering it with jargon, making it difficult for the layman to entirely grasp flow theory. Experiences: Explaining Flow                 Each essay introducing flow state must, by necessity, explain to the reader what flow state is. Doing so is tricky, as a flow state is an abstract mental state. Most papers describe it as a state of deep concentration and list the requirements and characteristics of a flow state. However, there are multiple strategies that can be used to subtly alter the reader’s comprehension of flow state. Regardless of strategy, each author must show that there are conditions that allow entrance to flow state, and that there are benefits for entering flow state.                 While Sweetser and Wyeth introduce the components required for flow state as a bulleted list of the eight original elements Csikszentmihalyi used to quantify flow state, the majority of the introduction to flow state is an extended example that relates flow state to the reader’s own experiences. Sweetser and Wyeth provide the example of reading as an activity that engages individuals in flow state, and describe how each element in the bulleted list is experienced while the reader is immersed in a text. This strategy accomplishes two things. First, Sweetser and Wyeth’s use of an example to explain flow state over a description in abstract terminology allows a reader to develop a deeper understanding of what a flow state is. Second, this connection to an activity familiar to the reader, combined with the deeper understanding, allows the reader to feel connected to the text.  This leads to a desire to learn more about flow state, and makes the reader more likely to accept the ethos of flow theory. By contrast, Kiili’s introduction to flow theory is a straight-forward and powerful description of the components of flow theory. Rather than use Csikszentmihalyi’s original eight factors, Kiili breaks the components of flow down into three stages: flow antecedents, the factors that must be in place for flow to occur; flow experience, the phenomena that occur during flow; and flow consequences, the long-term effects of being in a flow state. For each stage, he describes its comprising factors, and in doing so, gives the reader a strong impression of each phase of flow state and how a person transitions from one to the next. This provides an explanation that enables the reader to understand, in abstract terminology, what a flow state is, and is a powerful appeal to logos. Additionally, the use of flow stages instead of Csikszentmihalyi’s original components show that he has done additional research into flow state, furthering his ethos and encouraging those readers to accept his conclusions. Finneran and Zhang take a more intermediate road. In addition to describing flow state in terms of the stages, Finneran and Zhang briefly list examples of activities that encourage flow states, allowing the reader to infer what flow state is like. The original flow activities, like rock climbing or chess playing (Csikszentmihalyi (1975) and Csikszentmihalyi (1988)), can be conceptualized so that the person is immersed in the activity. The activity could be master chess playing, music performing, or the more everyday flow experiences like reading (McQuillan and Conde, 1996). The use of the activities of rock climbing, music performing and chess playing as examples of immersion help the reader understand flow state; many readers are aware of the zen-like focus that such activities are known to provoke. By relating those experiences to everyday flow experiences like reading, Finneran and Zhang help the reader to understand flow states, without needing the help of an extended example’s appeal to pathos. Finally, Admiraal et al.’s, contrasting with the erudite image established in describing flow state, describes what flow state is in very simplistic and unclear terms. Flow experience is described only as “based on a symbiotic relationship between challenges and the skills needed to meet those challenges,” with some qualification to describe how the challenges and skills interrelate. There is no list of flow antecedents, or qualities of the flow state, aside from “intense concentration or absolute absorption.” The lack of descriptions of components of flow or flow antecedents may be attributed to the context of this paper. While the other papers dealt deeply with the intricacies of flow theory, Admiraal et al’s work requires only the understanding that flow state is a period of intense focus that occurs when a student is being challenged in relation to their own abilities, and that this state has been shown to correlate with a higher rate of learning. While this simplistic description takes away from the ethos established with precise language, it easily allows the layman to understand what flow state is in broad strokes. Consequences: Relating Flow to a Larger Field                                   No matter how esteemed flow theory is or how well it is described, an academic paper must convincingly relate the theory to the author’s thesis. Whether the author aims to show the relationship between flow and game design, apply flow theory to improve results in an educational context, or provide a better model of flow antecedents in a computer-mediated environment, the author must provide a nexus between the theory and its application in context.                 Game Flow: A Model for Evaluating Player Enjoyment in Games describes a means to apply flow state to game design. In order to apply flow theory to a larger topic, Sweetser and Wyeth show that it has successfully been applied to similar systems. They list other topics that flow theory has been successfully applied to, including engaging commercial websites, assessing information systems, and assessing interactive music environments. The list of these examples shows topics in the field of computer science can be related back to flow theory. The use of computer-based interactive systems as examples of topics to which flow state has been successfully applied also explains to the reader that applying it to video games, the ultimate interactive computer systems, would not only be useful, but a natural development of both flow theory and game design.                 Kiili, on the other hand, integrates the topic of educational gaming with flow theory in a subtler way. Only two lines directly deal with educational gaming in the section, just after halfway through the section: All three components, person, task and artifact, should be taken into account when designing educational games. Generally, the aim of an educational game is to provide students with challenges related to the main task so that flow experience is possible. In this quote, he relates what he has been discussing until this point as something that one must consider while designing games, and expanding on the usage of these games. While this in and of itself isn’t a powerful link to educational game development, throughout the remainder of the paper, he describes individuals entering flow state as players, users, and learners, referencing them 14 times through the last 3 paragraphs of his introduction. This relates every word used to describe flow state in those paragraphs back to the topic of designing educational games as a whole, creating an incredibly strong link in the user’s mind between flow theory and its applications in designing educational games. In A person–artefact–task (PAT) model of flow antecedents in computer-mediated environments, the authors explain why the tool used to accomplish a task, i.e., the artefact, must be taken into account when applying flow theory.  The authors do this by means of analogy. Flow theory is linked back to the main topic of the person-artefact-task model by analyzing the studies that Csikszentmihalyi used and pointing out that artefacts were never given much thought, as mastery of the artefact was assumed. “For example, calculating travel expenses with a spreadsheet is a much different activity than doing it with pencil and paper. When a person uses pencil and paper to calculate travel expenses, it is assumed that the person has no problem with using pencil and paper; thus, they are transparent or not noticed. This assumption does not necessarily hold when the person uses a spreadsheet.” In this example, Finneran and Zhang show that the underlying mechanics of flow theory are sound, by demonstrating that when the artefact is transparent, there is no issue with the theory. However, the example rings true with many readers in the target audience who had to spend many hours learning how to use advanced software before it became transparent to them. This creates pathos in the target audience and makes readers more likely to believe the later claims set forth in the paper. Additionally, by showing that flow theory merely assumes a transparent artefact, Finneran and Zhang avoid directly challenging Csikszentmihalyi’s work, and in doing so avoid actively undermining their own ethos. The strongest example of linking flow theory to a topic is found in the work of Admiraal et al. Throughout the introduction of flow theory, each aspect was related to its application to education. The intrinsically rewarding nature of flow state was used to imply that students entering flow state while learning would be motivated to study on their own. The intense concentration defining flow state was linked to well-performing students. Interest generated by flow state was shown to correspond with the talent and creativity of students. In addition to these thorough links to education provided throughout the introduction, Admiraal et al. provide examples of other educational activities that employ flow state, such as sports, tutoring, and technology education, explaining to the reader that flow and teaching are interrelated, much as Sweetser and Wyeth did with flow and game design. Conclusion Introducing flow theory to readers unfamiliar with the subject is a difficult task. There’s a vast body of literature written on the subject, and the causes and benefits of flow state are complex and can be difficult to explain to a lay reader. By relying on the three-step model of establishing the credibility of flow theory, introducing the components of flow state, and demonstrating a nexus between flow theory and the subject of the articles, the authors introduce the average game designer to the subject in a way that allows clear understanding of the topic, the work put into refining the theory, and its relevance to their field.                 The act of introducing flow theory is couched tightly in the effective use of rhetoric. Whether by showing a clear knowledge of the subject, the work that others have done on the topic, or merely by projecting an image of authority, the author establish flow theory as respectable. In the act of introducing flow, an abstract state of consciousness, to the average reader, the author must employ exceedingly clear logos or pathos to clearly transmit understanding. The alternative is to explain flow to the reader on a strictly conceptual level. The act of tying flow theory to a larger thesis is a feat of logos, providing the author’s target audience with a clear reason why flow theory is applicable to their work.                 Through the use of effective rhetoric, these academics were able to successfully introduce a larger audience to flow theory. The three-step model as explored in this paper can also be used as an aid to those with little experience writing academic papers or teaching such concepts to students to effectively communicate the concept and worth of flow theory in the many fields that comprise game design. References Admiraal, W., Huizengaa, J., Akkermanb, S., & Dama, G. t. (2011). The concept of flow in collaborative game-based learning. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(3), 1185-1194. Finneran, C., & Zhang, P. (2003). A person–artefact–task (PAT) model of flow antecedents in computer-mediated environments. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59, 475-496. Kiili, K. (2005). Digital game-based learning: Towards an experiential gaming model. Internet and Higher Education, 8, 13-24. Sweetser, P., & Wyeth, P. (2005). GameFlow: A Model for Evaluating Player Enjoyment in Games. ACM Computers in Entertainment, 3(3), 1-24. Read More