Action Real-Time Strategy Gaming Experience Related to Increased Attentional Resources: An Attentional Blink Study.

Xianyang Gan,Ruifang Cui,Nan Qiu,Xin Zong,Tiejun Liu,Shaofei Ying,Yutong Yao,Hui Liu,Weiyi Ma,Dong Jiang,Li Dong,Xingfeng Tang,Jiaxin Xie,Diankun Gong

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2020.00101

Abstract

Action real-time strategy gaming (ARSG) is a cognitively demanding task which requires attention, sensorimotor skills, team cooperation, and strategy-making abilities. A recent study found that ARSG experts had superior visual selective attention (VSA) for detecting the location of a moving object that could appear in one of 24 different peripheral locations (Qiu et al., 2018), suggesting that ARSG experience is related to improvements in the spatial component of VSA. However, the influence of ARSG experience on the temporal component of VSA—the detection of an item among a sequence of items presented consecutively and quickly at a single location—still remains understudied. Using behavioral and electrophysiological measures, this study examined whether ARSG experts had superior temporal VSA performance compared to non-experts in an attentional blink (AB) task, which is typically used to examine temporal VSA. The results showed that the experts outperformed the non-experts in their detection rates of targets. Furthermore, compared to the non-experts, the experts had faster information processing as indicated by earlier P3 peak latencies in an AB period, more attentional resources distributed to targets as indicated by stronger P3 amplitudes, and a more flexible deployment of attentional resources. These findings suggest that experts were less prone to the AB effect. Thus, long-term ARSG experience is related to improvements in temporal VSA. The current findings support the benefit of video gaming experience on the development of VSA.

Highlights

Over the past few decades, video gaming has become an increasingly popular entertainment medium worldwide
Using both behavioral and electrophysiological measures, this study examined the influence of Action real-time strategy gaming (ARSG) experience on the development of temporal visual selective attention (VSA)—a major component of VSA that still remains understudied
The electrophysiological data showed that compared to the non-experts, the experts had faster information processing as indicated by earlier P3 peak latencies during an attentional blink (AB) period and more attentional resources distributed to targets as indicated by greater P3 amplitudes

Summary

Introduction

Over the past few decades, video gaming has become an increasingly popular entertainment medium worldwide. Compared with non-experts, action video gaming experts had better perception thresholds and processing speeds (Schubert et al, 2015), visual sensitivity (Appelbaum et al, 2013), visual short-term memory storage (Colzato et al, 2013; Blacker et al, 2014), top-down guidance in visual search (Wu and Spence, 2013), spatial distribution of attention (Feng et al, 2007; West et al, 2008), and oculomotor control (West et al, 2013) These findings are likely due to the fact that VSA is essential for action video gaming, as it enables players to selectively concentrate on a discrete aspect of information while ignoring other perceivable information. Superior VSA can optimize the usage of attentional resources, allowing for successful action video gaming (Dye et al, 2009)

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