Learning, attentional control and action video games

By C. Shawn Green, Daphne Bavelier. Current Biology, 2012

649 citations recorded by the source corpus.

While humans have an incredible capacity to acquire new skills and alter their behavior as a result of experience, enhancements in performance are typically narrowly restricted to the parameters of the training environment, with little evidence of generalization to different, even seemingly highly related, tasks. Such specificity is a major obstacle for the development of many real-world training or rehabilitation paradigms, which necessarily seek to promote more general learning. In contrast to these typical findings, research over the past decade has shown that training on ‘action video games’ produces learning that transfers well beyond the training task. This has led to substantial interest among those interested in rehabilitation, for instance, after stroke or to treat amblyopia, or training for various precision-demanding jobs, for instance, endoscopic surgery or piloting unmanned aerial drones. Although the predominant focus of the field has been on outlining the breadth of possible action-game-related enhancements, recent work has concentrated on uncovering the mechanisms that underlie these changes, an important first step towards the goal of designing and using video games for more definite purposes. Game playing may not convey an immediate advantage on new tasks (increased performance from the very first trial), but rather the true effect of action video game playing may be to enhance the ability to learn new tasks. Such a mechanism may serve as a signature of training regimens that are likely to produce transfer of learning.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/df20ce9e15809745dbe426f4f0958f41b142a559

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Citations in the corpus

Impacts of technology use on children (2019, background): “There is also evidence suggesting that playing active video games, at least in adult populations, may enhance aspects of attention such as attention to objects and selective attention over space/time and abilities to learn new tasks (Green and Bavelier, 2012[87]).”
The power of play: The effects of Portal 2 and Lumosity on cognitive and noncognitive skills (2015, background): “…games has been shown to be positively related to various competencies, attributes, and outcomes such as visual-spatial skills and attention (e.g., Green & Bavelier, 2007, 2012, Ventura, Shute, Wright, & Zhao, 2013), openness to experience (Chory & Goodboy, 2011; Ventura, Shute, & Kim, 2012;…”
Improving Methodological Standards in Behavioral Interventions for Cognitive Enhancement (2019, background): “2007), video games (Colzato et al. 2014; Green and Bavelier 2012; Strobach et al. 2012), or musical interventions (Schellenberg 2004).”
Meta-Analysis of Action Video Game Impact on Perceptual, Attentional, and Cognitive Skills (2018, background): “It is also an important theoretical question in light of the proposal that the general skills learned from playing in a game context can transfer to nongame contexts that require the same underlying skills (Green & Bavelier, 2012; Mayer, 2014; Sims & Mayer, 2002).”
Enhancing Cognition with Video Games: A Multiple Game Training Study (2013, background): “Far transfer claims include enhanced attentional control and speeded learning of new tasks after action video game training [25].”
Action video game training for cognitive enhancement (2015, background): “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].”
The benefits of playing video games. (2014, background): “Compared to control participants, those in the shooter video game condition show faster and more accurate attention allocation, higher spatial resolution in visual processing, and enhanced mental rotation abilities (for a review, see C. S. Green & Bavelier, 2012).”
The Effect of Educational Games on Learning Outcomes, Student Motivation, Engagement and Satisfaction (2020, background): ““Action video games” could lead to signiﬁcantly higher learning outcomes and stronger ability to learn new knowledge in rehabilitation than general training (Green & Bavelier, 2012).”
Plasticity of the visual cortex and treatment of amblyopia. (2014, positive): “In the case of action video games, vision is thought to be improved by engaging attentional mechanisms [43, 44].”
Smartphones and Cognition: A Review of Research Exploring the Links between Mobile Technology Habits and Cognitive Functioning (2017, background): “Action games require high cognitive and perceptual loads, divided visual processing, and feedback learning with a complex reward schedule, and seem to specifically improve pattern recognition and the metacognitive process of “learning-to-learn” (Green and Bavelier, 2012).”