Video game experience predicts virtual, but not real navigation performance

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Abstract

In recent years, studies have shown that video game experience is related to improvements across a variety of cognitive and visuospatial tasks. This study investigated the relationship between prior video game experience and spatial performance in virtual and real environments. Across two experiments, gaming experience was related to performance in desktop virtual environments; those with more video game experience were more accurate in pointing to nonvisible targets. In contrast, gaming experience was unrelated to three different real environment tasks, suggesting that video games may primarily influence perceptual and cognitive abilities in the visual domain over abilities that also involve kinesthetic or vestibular input. Contrary to expectations, gaming experience was also related to performance in immersive virtual environments, which may be related to the use of a joystick interface during immersive travel. Video game experience was also positively related to performance in a dynamic spatial task and to verbal SAT and math SAT scores. Sex differences in desktop virtual navigation and dynamic spatial ability were eliminated when game experience was included as a covariate.

Introduction

In general, studies show that video game experience alters perceptual and cognitive abilities. Perhaps most commonly assessed, research consistently shows that video game exposure is related to improvements in mental rotation (Cherney, 2008, De Lisi and Cammarano, 1996, Quaiser-Pohl et al., 2006). Video game playing is also related to faster performance in visual search tasks (Castel et al., 2005, Dye et al., 2009), increased visual attention (Green and Bavelier, 2003, Green and Bavelier, 2006, Spence et al., 2009), better visual memory (Ferguson, Cruz, & Rueda, 2008) and improved contrast sensitivity (Li, Polat, Makous, & Bavelier, 2009). Dynamic spatial tasks that require reasoning about moving stimuli, such as tracking multiple objects (Green and Bavelier, 2006, Trick et al., 2005) or judging relative velocity (Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 1994) have been shown to improve with gaming experience.

In addition to correlational studies, in which the causal link between gaming experience and performance is ambiguous, a number of experimental studies have also manipulated gaming exposure. Most experimental studies have shown that training with video games improves mental rotation (De Lisi and Wolford, 2002, Feng et al., 2007, Okagaki and Frensch, 1994, Terlecki et al., 2008) and visual attention (Green and Bavelier, 2003, Green and Bavelier, 2006, Spence et al., 2009). However, a few studies have shown no improvement in perceptual or cognitive performance after video game training (Boot et al., 2008, Greenfield et al., 1994, Sims and Mayer, 2002). The lack of relationship shown with some research may reflect the total training time involved in these studies. As gamers have hundreds or thousands of hours of experience, it may be that mass exposure is necessary to result in perceptual or cognitive changes, and that the relatively short episodes employed in training episodes are insufficient to produce reliable effects (Boot et al., 2008).

Beyond visuospatial skills, researchers have also examined the relationship between game experience and measures of general intelligence or school performance, and findings from these studies are relatively mixed. Among college students, Anderson and Dill (2000) found a negative relationship between game playing and GPA which has also been reported in a study among high school students (Gentile, Lynch, Linder, & Walsh, 2004). In contrast, Terlecki and Newcombe (2005) found that general computer experience (including gaming experience) was associated with higher SAT scores, and van Schie and Wiegman (1997) reported a positive relationship between gaming and IQ. The studies investigating academic achievement and general intelligence did not report on possible quadratic relationships with gaming experience, which might better explain the relationship between these variables. Durkin and Barber (2002) found that those who reported low use of computer games had higher grades than both those who never played and those who played daily, suggesting that there may be an optimal amount of video game exposure associated with performance before achievement begins to decline.

A large body of research has examined small-scale visuospatial abilities through the use of static paper-and-pencil psychometric tests or dynamic computer-based tasks. However, the relationship between gaming experience and large-scale wayfinding tasks is still poorly understood. Navigation tasks involve the acquisition and integration of spatial information over time by updating the location of objects with respect to oneself during movement. Video games often involve experiencing environments from an overhead perspective or moving through 3D environments. Because of their similarities, one might predict that gaming experience leads to increased performance in virtual navigation tasks, yet current research shows little support. Although one study found a relationship between prior gaming experience and virtual maze performance (Moffat, Hampson, & Hatzipantelis, 1998), others have reported no relationship in learning virtual Hebb–Williams mazes (Shore, Stanford, MacInnes, Klein, & Brown, 2001), learning in a virtual radial arm task (Astur, Tropp, Sava, Constable, & Markus, 2004), or learning a virtual large-scale multi-segment maze (Castelli, Corazzini, & Geminiani, 2008).

Importantly, studies investigating the relationship between video game exposure and navigation have always examined performance in virtual, rather than real environments. Virtual and real navigational experiences are similar, and performance measures between the two types are typically correlated (Richardson et al., 1999, Waller, 2005). However, as the sensory modalities involved in virtual interfaces differ, this might also lead to different relationships with video gaming. During desktop virtual navigation, users travel through an environment via a joystick and computer screen, much like playing a 3D video game. Sensory information is limited to vision, thus eliminating kinesthetic and vestibular input normally experienced from bodily translations and rotations in real travel. Research investigating the influence of body-based sensory information in learning large-scale environments is mixed, with some studies showing that navigation with vision alone can be problematic (Lathrop and Kaiser, 2002, Richardson et al., 1999; Waller, Hunt, & Knapp, 1998; Wraga, Creem-Regehr, & Proffitt, 2004). Others have reported that vision alone is sufficient for updating self to object relationships (Riecke, van Veen, & Bülthoff, 2002) or for learning layouts of large environments (Waller, Loomis, & Steck, 2003). If navigation involving kinesthetic and vestibular information is different from vision-based navigation, then one might expect different relationships between gaming and desktop virtual vs. immersive virtual performance (Klatzky, Loomis, Beall, Chance, & Golledge, 1998). With immersive virtual technology, the use of a head-mounted display (HMD) with a head tracker allows users to be perceptually surrounded by the environment. Head rotations provide vestibular information and body tracking provides kinesthetic input, allowing for a fuller range of sensory experience, albeit with a field of view constrained with respect to normal vision. Evidence regarding the relationship between gaming experience and virtual navigation is scant and with respect to real navigation, nonexistent. Here we present data from two experiments examining this relationship using both desktop and immersive VR environments, as well as real environment tasks.

Sex differences, with males outperforming females, are commonly found in spatial tasks, especially those involving the mental rotation of images (Linn and Petersen, 1985, Voyer et al., 1995), and these differences have also been shown in virtual learning tasks (Moffat et al., 1998, Shore et al., 2001; Waller et al., 1998). Recent studies report that males generally have more video game experience than females (Castelli et al., 2008, Shore et al., 2001, Terlecki and Newcombe, 2005), and since video game experience is influential in basic visuospatial processes, this experience might further contribute to sex differences in spatial tasks. In the studies reported here, we expect to find sex differences favoring males in all tasks; however, this relationship may be qualified when gaming experience is covaried.

In the first study, we assess the relationship between video game experience and spatial performance measures, both in a real indoor environment and in a desktop virtual environment. We predict a stronger relationship between gaming and virtual experience than with real experience. In the second study, we examine learning from both desktop and immersive virtual environments and assess performance in pointing to targets in a real space. We predict a stronger video game relationship with desktop compared to both immersive VR and real environment tasks. A summary of the real and virtual tasks used in both studies are presented in Table 1. We also collect math and verbal SAT scores, and assess performance on a dynamic spatial task, predicting positive relationships with gaming experience.

Section snippets

Participants

Thirty-two students and employees of Saint Michael’s College (15 male, 17 female) were involved in this study (mean age = 22.9; SD = 7.7). Participants were paid $15 for their time.

Materials

Participants learned eight virtual reality “paths” sitting in front of a 19 in. LCD screen. Paths were depicted as simple 2-m-wide hallways interspersed with 90° turns and contained either four or five segments. Virtual environments were presented using Vizard software (WorldViz, Santa Barbara, CA), and navigation was

Participants

Forty students at St. Michael’s College (20 male, 20 female) were involved in this study (mean age = 20.7; SD = 1.08). Participants were awarded extra credit in a psychology course for volunteered time.

Gaming experience

In a pretest questionnaire, participants were asked questions regarding gaming experience, including frequency of current play, frequency during initial play (the earliest year they began playing video games), and frequency during peak play (the amount played at the time in their life when they were

General discussion

These studies investigated the relationship between video game experience and spatial performance in virtual and real environments. Across two studies, gaming experience was related to virtual navigation performance, in both single-target learning in simple hallway environments and multi-target learning in a detailed, campus environment. In contrast to virtual environments, gaming experience was not related to performance in three different real environment tasks. To our knowledge, these are

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the NASA-Vermont Space Grant Consortium: Mentored Student Grant program.

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