Elsevier

Acta Psychologica

Volume 119, Issue 2, June 2005, Pages 217-230
Acta Psychologica

The effects of action video game experience on the time course of inhibition of return and the efficiency of visual search

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2005.02.004Get rights and content

Abstract

The ability to efficiently search the visual environment is a critical function of the visual system, and recent research has shown that experience playing action video games can influence visual selective attention. The present research examined the similarities and differences between video game players (VGPs) and non-video game players (NVGPs) in terms of the ability to inhibit attention from returning to previously attended locations, and the efficiency of visual search in easy and more demanding search environments. Both groups were equally good at inhibiting the return of attention to previously cued locations, although VGPs displayed overall faster reaction times to detect targets. VGPs also showed overall faster response time for easy and difficult visual search tasks compared to NVGPs, largely attributed to faster stimulus-response mapping. The findings suggest that relative to NVGPs, VGPs rely on similar types of visual processing strategies but possess faster stimulus-response mappings in visual attention tasks.

Introduction

The ability to efficiently search the visual environment in order to locate certain objects or features is a critical component of the visual system. The manner in which one allocates attention to certain objects or features is influenced by a number of variables, some relating to the characteristics of the objects and the search display, and others relating to the prior experience of the individual. The sparse amount of previous research that has examined how video game playing influences information processing has shown that the reaction times in color and shape discrimination tasks by children who have had some experience playing video game were significantly faster than those of non-players (Yuji, 1996). Other research has shown that video game players have significantly better eye-hand motor coordination on a pursuit rotor, although no relationship was found between an individual’s eye-hand motor coordination and the amount of time spent weekly playing video games or the length of experience with video games (Griffith, Voloschin, Gibb, & Bailey, 1983). More recently, Green and Bavelier (2003) demonstrated that people who have experience playing action video games display enhanced attentional capacity and control of selective attention, suggesting that experience with playing video games may alter and improve the attentional system.

In order to examine the attentional ability of action video game players (VGPs) and non-video game players (NVGPs), Green and Bavelier (2003) employed several attentional paradigms that measured attentional resources and the distribution of visual attention. In order to examine how the VGP process distracts information presented in the visual environment, Green and Bavelier measured reaction times (RTs) for target detection in situations in which a distracting “flanker” was present in the periphery. The flanker object was presented just outside the search environment, and was either compatible with the target (it was the same shape as the target) or incompatible with the target (it differed from the target in terms of shape). Participants completed this task either easily (no other distracters present in the search environment) or with difficulty (distracters were present in the search environment). The notion is that as the search display becomes more difficult, participants will be better at ignoring the flanker as they are focusing all attentional resources on the target (e.g., Lavie & Cox, 1997). However, when the task is easier, the flanker will have a distracting effect because there are residual available attentional resources under these search conditions. Green and Bavelier measured the degree to which the presence of distracting objects (either compatible or incompatible with the actual target) in the periphery influenced response times in easy and hard search displays. What was found was that NVGPs displayed less distraction at high levels of difficulty, while VGPs had greater residual attentional resources at these same high levels of difficulty. Thus, the VGPs actually showed more of a distraction effect in difficult search displays suggesting that these individuals had greater residual attentional resources to process compatible distractor items. On the other hand, NVGPs had already exhausted attentional resources under similar conditions and did not show this effect. This finding suggests that the difficult target task was less demanding for the VGPs, and this resulted in higher levels of residual attentional resources than NVGPs under similar conditions. In accordance with these findings, Green and Bavelier also found that VGPs could subitize more items that appeared briefly on a screen at increasing levels of eccentricities relative to NVGPs. It was also found that that VGPs show less of an “attentional blink” for rapid sequentially presented items, showing that the advantage displayed by VGPs is not restricted to spatial forms of visual attention.

The striking findings from the Green and Bavelier (2003) study strongly suggest that VGPs are better at detecting information in the visual environment, but it remains unclear whether VGPs carry out attentionally demanding tasks in a similar (but more efficient) manner than NVGPs, or if both populations rely on similar mechanisms and processes with VGPs engaging and completing each stage of processing at a faster rate. It may be that VGPs rely on different kinds or more efficient types of processing of the visual environment, and that speeded perception enhances visual processing and faster stimulus-response mappings lead to optimal performance. Thus, it may be the case that VGPs have greater control over attentional resources as well as respond faster to the presence or absence of targets in the visual environment. The present study seeks to examine the mechanisms and processes that are relied on by VGPs, and whether they differ qualitatively and/or quantitatively from those of NVGPs. In order to examine this in more detail, two experiments were conducted in order to obtain a better understanding of how VGPs carry out visual search and inhibit attention from returning to previously attended locations, and examine the similarities and differences between VGPs and NVGPs in terms of the ability to efficiently control and allocate visual attention.

Section snippets

Experiment 1

One paradigm which has been used extensively to examine the operation of the visual attention system involves measuring reactions times to cued and uncued regions of space. Posner and Cohen (1984) have demonstrated that if attention is captured at a cued peripheral location and then moved to a different location, the time to detect a target at the initially cued location is facilitated, but after a delay of 200 ms or more between the onset of the cue and the target, target detection then becomes

Participants

Forty subjects aged between 18 and 34 years (mean age = 20.9 years) participated in the experiment, with 20 subjects (19 males and 1 female) making up both the videogame player (VGP) and non-videogame player (NVGP) experimental groups. The VGPs were selected on the criteria that they had played action videogames (a) at least four times a week for a minimum of 1 hour per day, and (b) had done so for the previous 6 months. Most VGPs played more frequently, however, for an average of 5.9 days and

Results and discussion

The mean RTs from each group are displayed in Fig. 2. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out on the mean RTs for the correct trials with trial type (cued or uncued), SOA (100, 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000 ms), and group (i.e., those participants with video-game experience (VGPs) or non-video game players (NVGPs)) as factors. All three main effects were found. The within-subjects main effects were for trial type, F(1, 38) = 78.6, p < .0001 (cued trials = 353 ms, uncued trials = 338 ms), and for SOA, F

Experiment 2

One reason that a similar overall pattern of results was obtained for both groups in Experiment 1 may have been that the target detection task (with only two locations) was relatively simple. Also, it may be the case then when attention is captured by abrupt-onset cues, this eliminates any advantage in attentional control that might normally be displayed by VGPs relative to NVGPs, relative to free visual search conditions that are not dictated by onset cues. Green and Bavelier (2003) found that

Participants

Twenty participants (19 male and 1 female) participated in this experiment, with 10 subjects comprising each experimental group (VGPs and NVGPs). These participants had participated in Experiment 1 originally and then elected, upon request, to participate in a second experiment at a later date. These participants were not selected based on performance in Experiment 1, and the experiment was run approximately 8 weeks after the completion of Experiment 1. The NVGPs were comparable to the NVGPs in

Results and discussion

The mean reaction times (RT) for the two groups in the easy and hard search condition are shown in Fig. 4. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out on the mean RTs for correct trials with task (easy or hard search), set size (4, 10, 18, or 26 items) and group (VGPs or NVGPs) as factors. Three main effects were found. As expected, within-subject main effects were found for task, F(1, 18) = 229.5, p < .0001 (easy search = 917 ms, hard search = 1354 ms) and for set size, F(3, 54) = 417.8, p < .0001 (RTs

General discussion

The findings from the present experiments confirm earlier findings that there are clear differences in performance between VGPs and NVGPs in visual attention tasks. However, there are also some interesting and important similarities between the two groups that may suggest that similar attentional processing is used in certain situations. In Experiment 1, VGPs displayed faster overall target detection RTs relative to NVGPs, but both groups showed a similar cueing effect at early SOAs, followed

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) grant to Jay Pratt and an NSERC post-graduate scholarship to Alan Castel.

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