Action video game play and cognitive flexibility in late adolescence and early adulthood -

Abstract

The industry of video games has substantially grown over the past decades, placing players in increasingly complex virtual scenarios in which cognitive flexibility is essential for rapid and accurate reactions to visual and auditory stimuli. Although it has been the hallmark of research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, cognitive flexibility remains an ill-defined construct that has been associated with intelligence, problem solving, creative thinking, attention shifting, and working memory. The current study sought to test one of the accounts of cognitive flexibility as a general ability to shift attention, and to determine whether action video game play is associated with enhanced ability to shift attention between rules, sets, and strategies. Action video game players (AVGPs) and non video game players (nVGPs) were administered 3 computerized shifting tasks that assessed set, rule, and strategy-shifting abilities. Participants’ visuospatial working memory capacity was also assessed and controlled for. The results indicated that the ability to shift attention between the sets of a task was associated with the ability to shift between the rules of a task, and with the ability to shift between strategies to solve a problem. The ability to shift between the rules of a task, however, was not associated with the ability to shift strategies to solve a problem. Results also indicated that action video game experience was not associated with enhanced set, rule, or strategy-shifting abilities. In fact, non players had faster reaction times (RTs) while switching on the set-shifting task, and were less prone to error on the strategy-shifting task. The possible factors underlying these findings are stated and discussed.