An Expectancy Effect Causes Improved Visual Attention Performance After Video Game Playing

Abstract

Numerous studies in the last decade have shown the potential for video games to enhance several cognitive processes, with most evidence targeting visual attention. However, a debate has emerged in the literature pointing to flawed experimental design being responsible for such findings. For example, participants’ expectancy effects (i.e., a placebo) have been proposed as an alternate explanation for observed cognitive enhancement resulting from video game training. Nevertheless, to this day, there is no empirical evidence suggesting that video game studies are susceptible to expectancy effects. Here, we investigate whether we could induce an expectancy effect in visual attentional performance with a brief single placebo video game training session. We recruited naive participants and randomly assigned them into two groups that went through the same experimental procedure, except for the experimental instructions. The experimental procedure included a pre-test with an Attentional Blink task and a Useful field of view task, then a single 15-min video game training session, and finally a post-test with the same tasks as the pre-test. The placebo group received instructions implying that the video game would make them perform better, while the control group was told that they would play a video game to give them a break from the experiment. Our results show an overall significant increase in the Useful field of view performance uniquely for the placebo group. Together, these results confirm the hypothesis that video game training experiments are susceptible to expectancy effects.