Not so fast: Rethinking the effects of action video games on attentional capacity

Considerable excitement has been generated by recent studies showing that video gaming alters fundamental aspects of attention. We tested the claim that people who frequently play action video games (video game players (VGPs)) have a greater capacity of attention than those who rarely play video games (non‐video game players (NVGPs)). We first attempted to replicate previous findings by comparing VGPs and NVGPs on a flanker compatibility task (Experiment 1). In contrast with previous studies, VGPs did not demonstrate greater intrusion from distractors, calling into question the reliability of previous findings. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the eccentricity of flankers in an Eriksen flanker task to examine the extent to which VGPs and NVGPs processed irrelevant peripheral stimuli. No attentional differences emerged in the conditions tested, with both groups displaying compatibility effects at all eccentricities. Together these results raise doubts that video game playing increases attentional capacity.     

暴力电子游戏玩家对攻击性图片注意偏向的ERP研究

本研究采用游戏使用习惯问卷筛选暴力电子游戏玩家和对照组被试各24名,利用线索探测范式,探讨了暴力电子游戏玩家对攻击性图片的注意偏向机制。结果发现：（1）与对照组相比,暴力电子游戏玩家对攻击性图片线索下探测目标诱发的P1潜伏期提前;（2）暴力电子游戏玩家表现出特定的脑电模式：N1潜伏期延长,P2波幅减小,P300波幅降低;（3）线索的有效性效应表现在早期ERP成分（P1）中。结果表明,暴力电子游戏玩家对攻击性图片表现出注意偏向,其脑电模式揭示暴力电子游戏对玩家的认知功能有消极影响。     

Reducing the gap in numerical knowledge between low- and middle-income preschoolers

We compared the learning from playing a linear number board game of preschoolers from middle-income backgrounds to the learning of preschoolers from low-income backgrounds. Playing this game produced greater learning by both groups than engaging in other numerical activities for the same amount of time. The benefits were present on number line estimation, magnitude comparison, numeral identification, and arithmetic learning. Children with less initial knowledge generally learned more, and children from low-income backgrounds learned at least as much, and on several measures more, than preschoolers from middle-income backgrounds with comparable initial knowledge. The findings suggest a class of intervention that might be especially effective for reducing the gap between low-income and middle-income children's knowledge when they enter school.     

Violent and nonviolent video games differentially affect physical aggression for individuals high vs. low in dispositional anger

Although numerous experiments have shown that exposure to violent video games (VVG) causes increases in aggression, relatively few studies have investigated the extent to which this effect differs as a function of theoretically relevant individual difference factors. This study investigated whether video game content differentially influences aggression as a function of individual differences in trait anger. Participants were randomly assigned to play a violent or nonviolent video game before completing a task in which they could behave aggressively. Results showed that participants high in trait anger were the most aggressive, but only if they first played a VVG. This relationship held while statistically controlling for dimensions other than violent content on which game conditions differed (e.g. frustration, arousal). Implications of these findings for models explaining the effects of video games on behavior are discussed.     

Semantic Memory Search and Retrieval in a Novel Cooperative Word Game: A Comparison of Associative and Distributional Semantic Models

Considerable work during the past two decades has focused on modeling the structure of semantic memory, although the performance of these models in complex and unconstrained semantic tasks remains relatively understudied. We introduce a two-player cooperative word game, Connector (based on the boardgame Codenames), and investigate whether similarity metrics derived from two large databases of human free association norms, the University of South Florida norms and the Small World of Words norms, and two distributional semantic models based on large language corpora (word2vec and GloVe) predict performance in this game. Participant dyads were presented with 20-item word boards with word pairs of varying relatedness. The speaker received a word pair from the board (e.g., exam-algebra) and generated a one-word semantic clue (e.g., math), which was used by the guesser to identify the word pair on the board across three attempts. Response times to generate the clue, as well as accuracy and latencies for the guessed word pair, were strongly predicted by the cosine similarity between word pairs and clues in random walk-based associative models, and to a lesser degree by the distributional models, suggesting that conceptual representations activated during free association were better able to capture search and retrieval processes in the game. Further, the speaker adjusted subsequent clues based on the first attempt by the guesser, who in turn benefited from the adjustment in clues, suggesting a cooperative influence in the game that was effectively captured by both associative and distributional models. These results indicate that both associative and distributional models can capture relatively unconstrained search processes in a cooperative game setting, and Connector is particularly suited to examine communication and semantic search processes.     

Games,Rules, and Practices

We present and defend a view labeled “practiceism” which provides a solution to the incompatibility problems. The classic incompatibility problem is inconsistency of: 1. Someone who intentionally violates the rules of a game is not playing the game.

2. In many cases, players intentionally violate the rules as part of playing the game (e.g. fouling to stop the clock in basketball).

The problem has a normative counterpart: 1’. In normal cases, it is wrong for a player to intentionally violate the rules of the game.

2’. In many normal cases, it is not wrong for a player to intentionally violate the rules of the game (e.g. fouling to stop the clock in basketball).

According to both formalism and informalism, the rules of the game include the formal rules of the game. Both traditional positions avoid the incompatibility problems by rejecting 1 and 1'. Practiceism rejects 2 and 2’: it maintains that the rules are the rules manifested in playing the game, not the formal rules.

Practiceism presents two theses: (a) the real rules of the game are the rules players follow: the practice determines the rules, and not vice versa. (b) the (first order) rules of a game determine what is legitimate within the game.     

Freedom and the value of games

This essay explores the features in virtue of which games are valuable or worthwhile to play. The difficulty view of games holds that the goodness of games lies in their difficulty: by making activities more complex or making them require greater effort, they structure easier activities into more difficult, therefore more worthwhile, activities. I argue that a further source of the value of games is that they provide players with an experience of freedom, which they provide both as paradigmatically unnecessary activities and by offering opportunities for relatively unconstrained choice inside the ‘lusory’ world that players inhabit.     

Friendly fire: Longitudinal effects of exposure to violent video games on aggressive behavior in adolescent friendship dyads

Research on gaming effects has focused on adolescence, a developmental period in which peer relationships become increasingly salient. However, the impact of peers on the effects of violent gaming on adolescents has been understudied. This study examined whether adolescents’ exposure to violent video games predicted their own and their friend's aggression one year later. Among 705 gaming adolescents, 141 dyads were identified based on reciprocated best friend nominations (73.8% male, M_age = 13.98). Actor‐Partner Interdependence Models indicated that adolescent males’ (but not females’) exposure to violent games positively predicted the aggression of their best friend 1 year later. This effect appeared regardless of whether the friends played video games together or not. The study illustrates the importance of peers in the association between violent gaming and aggression.     

3D-Multiple Object Tracking training task improves passing decision-making accuracy in soccer players

ObjectivesThe ability to perform a context-free 3-dimensional multiple object tracking (3D-MOT) task has been highly related to athletic performance. In the present study, we assessed the transferability of a perceptual-cognitive 3D-MOT training from a laboratory setting to a soccer field, a sport in which the capacity to correctly read the dynamic visual scene is a prerequisite to performance.DesignThroughout pre- and post-training sessions, we looked at three essential skills (passing, dribbling, shooting) that are used to gain the upper hand over the opponent.MethodWe recorded decision-making accuracy during small-sided games in university-level soccer players (n = 23) before and after a training protocol. Experimental (n = 9) and active control (n = 7) groups were respectively trained during 10 sessions of 3D-MOT or 3D soccer videos. A passive control group (n = 7) did not received any particular training or instructions.ResultsDecision-making accuracy in passing, but not in dribbling and shooting, between pre- and post-sessions was superior for the 3D-MOT trained group compared to control groups. This result was correlated with the players' subjective decision-making accuracy, rated after pre- and post-sessions through a visual analogue scale questionnaire.ConclusionsTo our knowledge, this study represents the first evidence in which a non-contextual, perceptual-cognitive training exercise has a transfer effect onto the field in athletes.