¶ … Waldo? Is a series of children's book created by Martin Handford. Essentially, the books consist o a series of detailed double-page illustrations that show dozens of individuals doing amusing activities in certain locations. The challenge is to find Waldo hidden in the group. Waldo is a rather nerdy looking character, with a red and white striped shirt, hat and glasses, but there are a number of similar shaped and colored objects within the illustrations. The books are fun, educational, and have inspired a television spin-off, a comic strip and a series of video games (Duckett, 1997).
This simple story/game is not so simple when one looks at it from a cognitive and/or pedagogical basis, though. First, one might ask what the story and illustration tells us about our world? Well, it asks the participant to use cognitive skills to scan hundreds of images and parts of images to find a single character. Recent studies have shown that there is a link between playing hidden object games and improved cognitive functions. This can be found by improving attention to details, object tracking, enhanced visual search recognition and even spatial memories. Seeing objects rotated, partially hidden, in different colors...
And orange apple, etc.) also causes the mind to make visual and cognitive leaps. As well, there may be objects that are unfamiliar to the reader that must be defined and processed for any sort of evaluation. It is easy to see how this would contribute to eye-hand coordination, but it turns out that the act of looking for and interpreting hidden objects "exercises" the brain in numerous ways. For younger learners, this can help define vocabulary, subject-object recognition, and even assist in helping to understand higher concepts in mathematics, science and philosophy (what belongs where and why?) (Sunami, 2013).
Further research shows that the Waldo experiene can be used in pedagogy to explain stereotypes and decision making algorithms -- just imagine every scene we participate in per day -- the grocery store, the barista stand, the sporting event. In all of these we cannot analyze every piece of information -- but instead, we pay attention to only what we think is important. From a simple energy and focus standpoint, we are hus forced to be "cognitive misers," otherwise the overwhelming amount of information and data would simply overwhelm us. Thus, we can think of this as our own personal…
