Action video gamers show superior complex attention and spatial memory skills, study finds

Habitual action video game players tend to exhibit superior spatial working memory and complex attention abilities compared to non-gaming individuals, though they don’t necessarily excel in simple attention tasks, according to new research published in the British Journal of Psychology.

The digital age has seen a meteoric rise in video gaming, not just as a form of entertainment but as a lifestyle and professional pursuit. This surge has prompted scientists to investigate the cognitive impacts of extensive gaming. Previous research has suggested that action video gaming could enhance various cognitive abilities, including attention and memory skills. However, questions remained about whether these skills translate to a higher tolerance for cognitive fatigue – a state of reduced mental alertness and performance following intensive cognitive activity.

“Through the work out of our lab and that of others, we are fairly confident regarding the cognitive demands that competitive video games place on players and the cognitive advantage habitual action video gamers seem to have over their non-gaming peers,” said study author Adam Toth (@AToth_88), an associate professor of neuroscience and biomechanics at the University of Limerick and program manager of the Lero Esports Science Research Lab. “Given that prolonged sustained task engagement is common during video-game play, we wondered if gamers also might demonstrate an advantage when engaging a sustained cognitive task that has previously shown to be cognitively fatiguing.”

The study involved 88 young adults, aged 18 to 35, who were free from neurological or color vision disorders. They were recruited from the local university and gaming communities. The participants were divided into two groups: 44 habitual action video game players and 44 non-gamers. The gamers were identified based on their weekly hours spent playing action video games, competitive ranking, and gaming frequency over the past year. In contrast, the non-gamers reported minimal video gaming activity.

Each group was further split, with half undergoing a cognitive fatigue intervention and the other half in a rest control condition. The cognitive abilities of the participants were tested using three tasks: the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), which measures sustained attention; the Number-Letter Task, assessing task switching and working memory; and the Groton Maze Task, a test of spatial working memory.

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The cognitive fatigue intervention involved a 45-minute Stroop task, a challenging cognitive test designed to induce fatigue. The control group watched a 45-minute documentary instead. To measure cognitive fatigue and engagement, subjective self-reports and pupillometry, a method that tracks pupil dilation as an indicator of cognitive load, were used.

The findings were intriguing. At the baseline, gamers demonstrated significantly faster responses in the Number-Letter Task and the Groton Maze Task, indicating better complex attention and spatial working memory. These results suggest that habitual engagement with action video games could be linked to enhanced abilities in managing complex tasks and spatial memory.

However, the study also throws a curveball. Contrary to what some might expect, the research found no significant difference between gamers and non-gamers in the Psychomotor Vigilance Task. This challenges the commonly held belief that gamers have superior attention skills across the board.

“I think some may be surprised to see that simple reaction times were not different between our video gamer and non-gamer samples,” Toth told PsyPost. “This suggests that the speed advantage that gamers appear to have may be more task-related than previously thought. This would call into question the veracity of the notion by some that esports players must retire in their early 20’s due to reductions in reaction time.”

Post-intervention, the study found no significant differences in cognitive performance between the groups, suggesting that the induced cognitive fatigue did not substantially affect either group. This finding is quite unexpected, as it indicates that cognitive fatigue, as induced in this study, doesn’t significantly impair subsequent cognitive performance in these tasks for either group.

Overall, the findings provide evidence “that video gaming continues to show benefits to cognitive functioning but that gamers do not have any superior resistance to cognitive fatigue and thus should be acutely aware of the effects that long bouts of gameplay can have on their overall performance as a result of cognitive fatigue,” Toth explained.

The study, while insightful, is not without limitations. One key limitation is the lack of control for participants’ involvement in traditional sports, which could potentially influence the results, particularly in the simple attention task. Furthermore, the study’s findings are correlational, meaning they do not establish a causal relationship between action video gaming and enhanced cognitive abilities.

Future research directions suggested by the study include establishing a causal link between playing different types of action video games and improved cognitive abilities. Additionally, the researchers propose exploring more naturalistic methods of inducing cognitive fatigue, including through video gaming itself, to better understand its effects on gamers and non-gamers alike.

“Cognitive fatigue is a very complex topic and may be task dependent itself,” Toth said. “Future work should look to examine if and how cognitive fatigue manifests during actual video game play across a myriad of esport genres.”

The study, “Comparing the cognitive performance of action video game players and age-matched controls following a cognitively fatiguing task: A stage 2 registered report“, was authored by Mark J. Campbell, Sarah C. Cregan, John M. Joyce, Magdalena Kowal and Adam J. Toth.