Action video game training for cognitive enhancement

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Highlights

  • Action video game play improves performance on a variety of tasks.

  • Benefits have been found in perceptual, attentional and cognitive tasks.

  • A possible mechanistic underpinning of action video games is ‘learning to learn’.

  • Critical features of video games that produce wide benefits are being uncovered.

Here we review the literature examining the perceptual, attentional, and cognitive benefits of playing one sub-type of video games known as ‘action video games,’ as well as the mechanistic underpinnings of these behavioral effects. We then outline evidence indicating the potential usefulness of these commercial off-the-shelf games for practical, real-world applications such as rehabilitation or the training of job-related skills. Finally, we discuss potential core characteristics of action video games that allow for wide learning generalization.

Introduction

For as long as there have been studies of human perceptual and cognitive capacities, there has been simultaneous interest in whether these capabilities can be improved 1, 2]. And although it is true that nearly all humans will show clear improvements on an extensively practiced task, it is typically the case that little to no benefits of this training are seen on new tasks  even if the new tasks appear on the surface to be quite similar to the highly practiced task 3, 4, 5]. This general phenomenon has been observed across domains  from perception (where for instance, training to identify a target in one part of the screen may not transfer to a different part of the screen [6]), to cognition (where training on one working memory task may not transfer to a different working memory task [7]), to motor control (where learning to overcome one type of motor perturbation may not transfer to a different type of perturbation [8]). Such lack of generalization across tasks represents a significant obstacle to the goal of producing real-world training benefits.

Over the past decade though, instances of much broader training effects, often engendered by ‘real-life activities’ such as aerobic activity, participation in sports, meditation, music training, or, the focus of this review, playing certain types of video games, have begun to permeate the literature 9, 10, 11, 12]. Indeed, there is now substantial evidence showing that playing one sub-genre of video games, so-called ‘action video games’, leads to improvements in a broad set of behavioral abilities that extend well beyond the confines of the games themselves 13, 14]. Here we provide a brief review of this literature with a particular emphasis on the breadth of the benefits, the possible mechanistic underpinnings of the observed enhancements, the potential for such video games to be used in practical applications, and the critical characteristics of action video games that allow for such far-reaching effects to be realized.

Section snippets

What are action video games?

The superordinate category label ‘video game’ encompasses an incredibly wide variety of experiences  so much so that to some extent, the term has no predictive value at all. Little to nothing can be inferred by merely knowing that an individual plays ‘video games,’ as ‘video games’ can mean anything from simplistic matching of colored blocks on a mobile device up through navigating highly complex, laboriously designed virtual worlds on the newest consoles [15]. Researchers across psychology have

Studying the effects of action video games

Before outlining the actual effects of playing action video games, it is worth quickly discussing how studies in this domain are conducted and conclusions are reached [17]. As is true of the literature on music, aerobic activity, meditation and sports training  because it is the case that some individuals, as part of their daily life, choose to engage in substantial amounts of action video game play, while others totally refrain from video game play  it is thus possible for researchers to conduct

Changes in perceptual, attentional, and cognitive skills

The enhancements associated with playing action video games range all the way from low-level perceptual skills up through high-level cognitive flexibility. This includes improvements in visual sensitivity 24, 29], basic perimetry [20], perceptual decision making [30], speed of processing 31, 32], perceptual simultaneity and temporal order judgments [21], in the capacity to select task relevant information across space 23, 33•, 34, 35, 36, 37•, 38] and time 23, 33•, 39, 40], to overcome

Mechanistic underpinnings of action video games: ‘learning to learn’

The enhanced performance observed on various tasks following action video game experience has typically been framed in the literature as reflecting ‘transfer effects,’ wherein training on one task conveys an immediate benefit when confronted with a new task. However, recent work has suggested an alternative viewpoint wherein action video game experience, rather than producing immediate benefits on new tasks, conveys upon users the ability to more quickly and effectively learn to perform new

Potential practical applications

Given the scope and scale of the observed action video game benefits, several research groups have examined the possibility of utilizing off-the-shelf action video games for practical purposes  either in rehabilitation or for job-related training. For example, in the area of rehabilitation, action video games have been shown to benefit both visual capabilities in adults with amblyopia (in some less severe cases even resulting in a return to normal acuity) [63] and reading capabilities in

Critical features of video games to produce wide benefits

One significant disadvantage of studying the effect of media consumption on behavioral abilities is that the forms of media consumed do not remain static over time. This is certainly true of video games, where genres that previously were quite distinct in terms of content and mechanics now have considerable overlap. For instance, although a decade ago fantasy video games were typically rather slow and turn-based (i.e. the player had an unlimited amount of time to choose and execute a course of

Conclusions

While standard perceptual or cognitive training paradigms often produce learning that is highly specific to the exact context of the trained task, the benefits of action video game play have been shown to extend well beyond the confines of the games. Clear enhancements in basic perceptual skills, in the ability to utilize selective attention, and in cognitive flexibility have been noted as a result of action video game play. Although more work on the real life implications of these effects is

Conflict of interest statement

DB is on the advisory board and a co-founder of Akili Interactive, and holds the following pending patents: Patent on Method and System for Treating Amblyopia (US Pat. Appln. No. 61/403 585); Patent on Method and System for Training ‘Number Sense’ (US Pat. Appln. No. 13/301 392).

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

  • • of special interest

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by an Office of Naval Research grant # N00014-14-1-0512.

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