I have thought of and made up this question because I found it interesting as it is very related to the modern teenage society, and especially since discovering video games for myself, and spending my time in their company. However, many people have told me that my new hobby is dangerous, it will make me addicted and do only harm to my mental health. I certainly did not like this accusation of AVG, but I did not know the subject myself to protect it, so I decided to investigate it and find out what positive effects can video games do to our cognition, particularly focusing on attention processing.
This research question is also relevant to the academic programme, as we are studying cognitive psychology, and one of the processes – attention, and the role it plays in human behaviour, I feel that my RQ investigation will be a useful additional material for the academic content as an example that demonstrates how our cognitive factors could be influenced and to what extend by different types of brain activity, e.g. video games.
In my essay, there are certain points that I want to cover, firstly I will talk about video games, their spread in society and the ages that are most involved in playing, what most people think the impact of AVG has on people and whether it is positive. I will attach the studies that would support or argue with certain statements that relate to my RQ and then show my view supporting it with evidence such as theories or empirical studies. I will describe several studies that can directly address my RQ and evaluate the effect on attention processing, evaluate a row of studies/theories and draw conclusions on the AVG effect on attention, positive or not. What should people know from my investigation about AVGs that is more truthful, less stereotypical, an overall overview of playing AVGs. The focus of the essay will be circulating around my RQ which I will be addressing to and partially answering throughout the body of the essay.
BODY
Action Video Games are games in which an individual is directly engaged in virtual playing from the 1st person view, following a plot and deciding on the actions that the game protagonist (or several personages in multiplayer mode) takes. My research question focuses whether when the individual is involved in such games, does his/her performance of attention processing change comparing to the non- AVG player.
The stereotype that most non-playing people hold on to is that gaming is mostly a negative activity, and gamers are thought to be unattractive, unsocial, lazy, pale and fat. Also, most people think that only teenagers and young adults are online and offline gamers, while as the Kowert et al. (2013) German study showed from surveying 50 000 gamers above 14 years old, they found that mostly gamers are middle – aged adults in their 30s, and most have strong friendships and are alike to non-gamers in every way – normal people. Now, we know what kind of people are involved in playing games, and the later studies about attention changes with video games are going to be talking about this age group, unless specified otherwise.
In the experiments where video-game players perform better than non-players it is questioned whether people that are better at managing their attention choose to play video games more, than people with worse attentional skills, meaning that what we find from the results is correlation, and not causation effect that action video games would have on the distribution of attention. So, I’ll bring up evidence to show the causation effect between the independent and dependent variables.
One of the attention processes is divided attention, it is when an individual needs to focus on two or more separate actions/objects at the same time. Greenfield et al (1994) made a detailed research on the topic, called “Action Video Games and Informal Education: Effects on Strategies for Dividing Visual Attention”. Their experiment tested college students – gamers’ and non-gamers’ performance at the task where the response time to notice targets in different locations of the screen. The ‘seen’ targets are measured as the participant presses a button when notices it. Targets might appear in different parts of the screen in likely and less likely areas and 2 targets can appear at the same time as well, but those are not counted in the results. There were two conditions in this experiment, in the first one the target appeared in one place 10% of the time, in another area 80% of the time and 10% both in the same places at once. In the other condition targets equally appeared in both places 45% of the time and 10% in both areas. The results show that in Experiment 1 new players’ and experts’ difference in response time at the 80% area was not significant, but in the unlikely 10% area experts reacted with the same RT, while newcomers were slowed down. So, in the Experiment 1, experts were responding to the target noticeably faster than new players. However, in Experiment 2 with 45% in both areas experts were not faster at RT.
Overall, gamers’ response time on noticing the target was shorter than non-gamers’/novices, and to support that gaming was the causal factor of improved attention, novices played a game ‘Robotron’ for 5 hours and then, their RT decreased by 10% comparing to the results from Experiment 1. The causation effect can be concluded as when non-video game players played ‘Robotron’ for 5 hours, and this changed the independent variable of the experiment, which is the amount of video games played per person, resulting the dependent variable, the one they measured that changed accordingly, and that was the response time of the participant – how quickly the target was noticed.
The results of this experiment demonstrate that divided attention is better developed in people who play video games, and playing video games would improve the skill of distributing attention. This is because of attentional field – (when the distance between the target and focused attention increases, reaction time proportionally increases), video game players are thought to have a wider attentional field and they can focus their attention on larger areas, thanks to gaming which improves their performance with practise.
From the Greenfield et al (1994) experiment we can notice that video games improve attention processing of individuals during their performance as this hypothesis is supported by gained results. The fact that individuals that did not play AVGs after playing became better at choosing where to focus their attention to have the most efficiency at noticing the target. And this can be referred to the cost and benefit effect, (alike to the tactic that gamers choose to use to have maximum efficiency in dividing attention), which is when the individual’s response time increases in the least probable target area, meanwhile the RT decreases in the most probable target area. Simply when an individual focuses his/her attention on 80% probability area, there he’ll see the target quicker – benefit, but if it appeared in the 10% area, it will take longer for the participant to react – cost.
The result of the experimental treatment – (playing video games) lowered the cost on the 10% target and improved attention in general, at all probability levels (80%, 10%, 45%, both). This could be explained that with playing, visual field of the player expands allowing to capture targets in a broader sight and/or the decrease (improvement) in the reaction time – players get more concentrated causing them to react quicker.
Overall, from this experiment I can draw the conclusion that playing video games improves attention processing at least temporarily as it affects the cognitive function of focusing attention, improving it with further experiences. The effect on attention can be called positive as an individual gets more focused and his time to react reduces, and those are convenient skills. In the study that I discuss above it is mentioned that AVG are used to train and test for important skills that surgeons, military soldiers and pilots should have, this specifies accuracy, the fast decision making in extreme situations and dividing attention – multitasking.
A similar study was done later by Green and Bavelier (2006), they wanted to test the correlation between improved visuospatial attention and action video games, and establish a causational relationship between the two factors. To investigate if action video games strengthen attention capability, they first did the experiment with AVG players and non-players to demonstrate a correlation. They have used a Useful Field of Vision task, when the target could appear in any part of the screen, this is aiming for distributed attention and the ability of participants to see the whole visual scene. The variables were distractors that were present at the screen in different numbers, video game experiences of participants, different eccentricity of the target and whether the target was centred. The participants had to respond to the stimuli on the screen by pressing corresponding buttons, they were tested at different eccentricities, 0, 23 or 47 distractor objects and a task where you should additionally see what target shape is in the centre.
The findings show that, AVG players where better at performing the task at all different variables, at 3 different eccentricities, once more demonstrating that their visual field is more spread, the number of distractors did not influence their results much, as well as the centred task. AVGP outperformed NVGP in everything significantly, this is seen as they have a very fast and accurate reaction, especially during the centred task, they get both, the centre shape and other targets as accurately as in other tasks, displaying that they can perform two tasks at once without losing on time and accuracy, whereas NVGP’s results dropped on both – noticing the target and responding to the centred shape, this clearly revealing their attentional limits. Thus, the correlation between strong attentional capabilities and Video games were established Green and Bavelier wanted to make sure that VGP did not have a genetically better visual skills, etc.