Video Game Use and Cognitive Performance: Does It Vary with the Presence of Problematic Video Game Use?

Abstract

Action video game players have been found to outperform nonplayers on a variety of cognitive tasks. However, several failures to replicate these video game player advantages have indicated that this relationship may not be straightforward. Moreover, despite the discovery that problematic video game players do not appear to demonstrate the same superior performance as nonproblematic video game players in relation to multiple object tracking paradigms, this has not been investigated for other tasks. Consequently, this study compared gamers and nongamers in task switching ability, visual short-term memory, mental rotation, enumeration, and flanker interference, as well as investigated the influence of self-reported problematic video game use. A total of 66 participants completed the experiment, 26 of whom played action video games, including 20 problematic players. The results revealed no significant effect of playing action video games, nor any influence of problematic video game play. This indicates that the previously reported cognitive advantages in video game players may be restricted to specific task features or samples. Furthermore, problematic video game play may not have a detrimental effect on cognitive performance, although this is difficult to ascertain considering the lack of video game player advantage. More research is therefore sorely needed.

Action video gaming and the brain: fMRI effects without behavioral effects in visual and verbal cognitive tasks

“…Since we did not find any differences between VGP and NVGP on the behavioral level, one might conclude that longtime action video gaming had no influence on cognitive performance. There have been various studies, which also found no beneficial effects of AVG experience on cognitive performance (e.g., Collins & Freeman, ; Van Ravenzwaaij, Boekel, Forstmann, Ratcliff, & Wagenmakers, ) and we suppose that a great number of similar studies have gone unreported due to publication bias. On the other hand, there have also been many studies reporting cognitive advantages for action video gamers—as mentioned in the introduction part of this paper (section ).…”

Meta-analysis of action video game impact on perceptual, attentional, and cognitive skills.

“…Studies involving clinical populations were systematically excluded (R. W. Li et al, 2011), as were studies comparing action video game players to particular populations such as musicians or bilinguals (Bergstrom, Howard, & Howard, 2012;Bialystok, 2006). Another study was excluded because we could not obtain the data in format corresponding to our action video game players selection criteria (Collins & Freeman, 2014).…”

The Empirical Analysis of Non-problematic Video Gaming and Cognitive Skills: A Systematic Review

“…Although there are only a few studies investigating this, most of them have found significant associations between action game play and flexibility, with videogame players showing lower switching cost than non-videogame players (Colzato 2010;Dobrowolski et al 2015;Green et al 2012;Hartanto et al 2016;Karle et al 2010;Strobach et al 2012). To our knowledge, only three studies have failed to find differences between action videogame players and non-players (i.e., Cain et al 2012;Collins and Freeman 2014;Dobrowolski et al 2015). However, the study from Dobrowolski et al (2015) is discussed separately below, as it distinguishes between different types of videogames and yields different results.…”