Recent studies indicate that playing action video games improves performance on a number of attention-based tasks. However, it remains unclear whether action video game experience primarily affects endogenous or exogenous forms of spatial orienting. To examine this issue, action video game players and non-action video game players performed an attentional capture task. The results show that action video game players responded quicker than non-action video game players, both when a target appeared in isolation and when a salient, task-irrelevant distractor was present in the display. Action video game players additionally showed a smaller capture effect than did non-action video game players. When coupled with the findings of previous studies, the collective evidence indicates that extensive experience with action video games may enhance players' top-down attentional control, which, in turn, can modulate the negative effects of bottom-up attentional capture.

Determining how we use our body to support cognition represents an important part of understanding the embodied and embedded nature of cognition. In the present investigation, we pursue this question in the context of a common perceptual task. Specifically, we report a series of experiments investigating head tilt (i.e., external normalization) as a strategy in letter naming and reading stimuli that are upright or rotated. We demonstrate that the frequency of this natural behavior is modulated by the cost of stimulus rotation on performance. In addition, we demonstrate that external normalization can benefit performance. All of the results are consistent with the notion that external normalization represents a form of cognitive offloading and that effort is an important factor in the decision to adopt an internal or external strategy.

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Research has demonstrated that experience with action video games is associated with improvements in a host of cognitive tasks. Evidence from paradigms that assess aspects of attention has suggested that action video game players (AVGPs) possess greater control over the allocation of attentional resources than do non-video-game players (NVGPs). Using a compound search task that teased apart selectionand response-based processes (Duncan, 1985), we required participants to perform an oculomotor capture task in which they made saccades to a uniquely colored target (selectionbased process) and then produced a manual directional response based on information within the target (response-based process). We replicated the finding that AVGPs are less susceptible to attentional distraction and, critically, revealed that AVGPs outperform NVGPs on both selection-based and response-based processes. These results not only are consistent with the improved-attentional-control account of AVGP benefits, but they suggest that the benefit of action video game playing extends across the full breadth of attention-mediated stimulus-response processes that impact human performance.Keywords Eye movements . Visual attention . Attentional capture . Visual search . Cognitive and attentional control Over the past decade, researchers have taken an interest in the impact that action video game experience has on cognition. Since action video games are typically fast-paced, require players to accurately select relevant information and make split-second decisions in contexts that are visually complex, and are attentionally demanding, these games have been targeted as an ideal candidate to assess the effect of experience on cognition. Experience with action video games has been linked to a variety of visual and cognitive benefits, with much of this work emphasizing improvements in tasks that engage selective-attention processes (for reviews,

Our attention and memory can be biased toward objects having high self-relevance, such as things we own. Yet in explaining such effects, theorizing has been limited to psychological determinants of self-relevance. Here we examined the contribution physical actions make to this ownership bias. In Experiment 1, participants moved object images on a touch interactive table that either arbitrarily belonged to "self" or "other," and that were moved into locations closer or farther from their bodies. Subsequent recognition was highest for self-owned objects moved closer to the body, as measured via a subsequent memory recall test. In Experiment 2, when participants moved images via keyboard rather than overt action, the proximity effect of the body on attention was abolished. In Experiment 3, participants pulled or pushed self-owned or other-owned object images to side-by-side locations on a touch interactive table. Self-owned objects that were pulled were recognized the most. Our findings demonstrate that physical actions can have a direct impact on the psychological saliency of owned objects, with the act of bringing objects toward the self leading to greater recall.