Videogames and attentional capacity

Videogames and attentional capacity

Playing videogames can influence perceptual and motor skills. This happens because when a person is exposed to a different visual environment, the visual system automatically adapts. There is a lot of scientific research supporting this claim. However, perceptual learning tends to be specific to the trained task. Generalization to another task is hardly ever found.

This study will show that playing action videogames is indeed capable of altering a range of visual skills. The results from four experiments indicate changes in different aspects of visual attention between habitual videogame players and non-videogame players. In the last experiment, playing an action videogame by non-players improved their pre-training abilities.

Flanker compatibility effect

This experimental paradigm can determine whether or not playing videogames produces an overall increase in attentional capacity. The task measures the effect that a distractor has on the target task. The size of the distractor-effect shows how much is left of the attentional resources. Results indicate that the effect of the distractor is large when the target task is easy, but small when the target task is difficult. This may be because when the target task is easy, spare attentional resources are spent on the distractor and thus distract. But when the target task is difficult, there are no attentional resources left and the participant is thus not distracted and the distractor-effect is smaller.

Increased attentional capacity

Flanker compatibility effect

With this task they will examine if playing videogames can increase the capacity of the visual attentional system. If videogame players have more attentional capacity, they should run out of their attentional resources slower than non-videogame players as the task becomes more difficult.

The results indicate that videogame players have greater attentional capacity, because they showed a distractor effect that remained even when the target task was difficult.

Enumeration task

They were also confirmed by the enumeration task, which showed that playing videogames increases the number of visual items that can be remembered.

Useful field of view task

Because it was still unclear whether or not playing videogames also helps processing outside the training range, they performed some extra tests. The results indicate that videogame players have an enhanced allocation of spatial attention over the visual field, even at untrained locations.

Attentional blink task

The fourth experiment examined if the pressure to act quickly on several visual items changes the ability to process items over time. Particularly they examine whether or not there is a bottleneck-effect of attention that often happens in temporal processing. The results indicate that videogame training improves task-switching abilities and decreases the attentional blink. Players of videogames have reduced visual and amodal bottlenecks. This means that they have an increased ability to process information over time. It is however not clear why that is. It might be due to faster target processing or an increased ability to maintain several attentional windows in parallel.

Training experiment

The results may be explained by selection-effects. Meaning that they may have selected videogame players with inherently better attentional skills than non-videogame players. For this reason, the last experiment was set up. The training was successful, and all the participants who got trained in playing videogames improved on the experimental tasks. It shows that only a few hours of training can increase the capacity of visual attention, its spatial distribution and its temporal resolution.