A study on thinking strategy between experts and novices of computer games

The purpose of this study is to investigate strategic thinking between the experts and the novices of computer games. The computer game "Klotski" was chosen for 76 elementary school students to play. The operating time and number of steps were recorded to identify the expert and novice players. Following this, five expert players and five novice players were asked to play the game again. All game play processes, using a think-aloud protocol, were videotaped for further analysis. The analysis results showed that the relationship between the operating time and the steps of the novice group were more scattered than the expert group. The significant difference between the expert and novice groups was the percentage of different thinking types. In the game playing process, the expert players used more analogical thinking while the novice players tended to use trial-and-error thinking.