The ubiquity of video games in today's society has led to significant interest in their impact on the brain and behavior and in the possibility of harnessing games for good. The present meta-analyses focus on one specific game genre that has been of particular interest to the scientific community-action video games, and cover the period 2000-2015. To assess the long-lasting impact of action video game play on various domains of cognition, we first consider cross-sectional studies that inform us about the cognitive profile of habitual action video game players, and document a positive average effect of about half a standard deviation (g = 0.55). We then turn to long-term intervention studies that inform us about the possibility of causally inducing changes in cognition via playing action video games, and show a smaller average effect of a third of a standard deviation (g = 0.34). Because only intervention studies using other commercially available video game genres as controls were included, this latter result highlights the fact that not all games equally impact cognition. Moderator analyses indicated that action video game play robustly enhances the domains of top-down attention and spatial cognition, with encouraging signs for perception. Publication bias remains, however, a threat with average effects in the published literature estimated to be 30% larger than in the full literature. As a result, we encourage the field to conduct larger cohort studies and more intervention studies, especially those with more than 30 hours of training. (PsycINFO Database Record

The ability of the human brain to learn is exceptional. Yet, learning is typically quite specific to the exact task used during training, a limiting factor for practical applications such as rehabilitation, workforce training, or education. The possibility of identifying training regimens that have a broad enough impact to transfer to a variety of tasks is thus highly appealing. This work reviews how complex training environments such as action video game play may actually foster brain plasticity and learning. This enhanced learning capacity, termed learning to learn, is considered in light of its computational requirements and putative neural mechanisms.

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The American Psychiatric Association recently included Internet gaming disorder (IGD) as a potential diagnosis, recommending that further study be conducted to help illuminate it more clearly. This paper is a summary of the review undertaken by the IGD Working Group as part of the 2015 National Academy of Sciences Sackler Colloquium on Digital Media and Developing Minds. By using measures based on or similar to the IGD definition, we found that prevalence rates range between ∼1% and 9%, depending on age, country, and other sample characteristics. The etiology of IGD is not well-understood at this time, although it appears that impulsiveness and high amounts of time gaming may be risk factors. Estimates for the length of time the disorder can last vary widely, but it is unclear why. Although the authors of several studies have demonstrated that IGD can be treated, no randomized controlled trials have yet been published, making any definitive statements about treatment impossible. IGD does, therefore, appear to be an area in which additional research is clearly needed. We discuss several of the critical questions that future research should address and provide recommendations for clinicians, policy makers, and educators on the basis of what we know at this time.