Perceptual, Attentional, and Executive Functioning After Real-Time Strategy Video Game Training: Efficacy and Relation to In-Game Behavior

Paweł Dobrowolski,Aneta Brzezicka,Maciek Skorko,Jakub Michalak,Monika Myśliwiec,Natalia Kowalczyk-Grębska

doi:10.1007/s41465-021-00211-w

Abstract

Recent meta-analyses and meta-analytic reviews of most common approaches to cognitive training broadly converge on describing a lack of transfer effects past the trained task. This also extends to the more recent attempts at using video games to improve cognitive abilities, bringing into question if they have any true effects on cognitive functioning at all. Despite this, video game training studies are slowly beginning to accumulate and provide evidence of replicable improvements. Our study aimed to train non-video game playing individuals in the real-time strategy video game StarCraft II in order to observe any subsequent changes to perceptual, attentional, and executive functioning. Thirty hours of StarCraft II training resulted in improvements to perceptual and attentional abilities, but not executive functioning. This pattern of results is in line with previous research on the more frequently investigated “action” video games. By splitting the StarCraft II training group into two conditions of “fixed” and “variable” training, we were also able to demonstrate that manipulating the video game environment produces measurable differences in the amount of cognitive improvement. Lastly, by extracting in-game behavior features from recordings of each participant’s gameplay, we were able to show a direct correlation between in-game behavior change and cognitive performance change after training. These findings highlight and support the growing trend of more finely detailed and methodologically rigorous approaches to studying the relationship between video games and cognitive functioning.

Highlights

The past two decades have seen a quick increase in research on the topic of cognitive training, or the targeted efforts of scientists to improve cognitive ability by way of behavioral interventions
Simple slope analysis revealed a significant effect of X on Y for the SC Variable group, b = − 1.08, t(53) = − 2.56, p = .013, 95% CI [− 1.90, − 0.25], but no such effect for the SC Fixed group (p = .398) (Fig. 3). This training study, which aimed to investigate the efficacy of improving attentional, perceptual, and executive functioning through training with the real-time strategy video game StarCraft II, resulted in several novel and important findings
We were able to show that this relationship, as well as the amount of change to perceptual and attentional abilities, was dependent on the experimental manipulation of the StarCraft II training paradigm

Summary

Introduction

The past two decades have seen a quick increase in research on the topic of cognitive training, or the targeted efforts of scientists to improve cognitive ability by way of behavioral interventions. This focus is both warranted and unsurprising given how important cognitive ability is for life success (e.g., Strenze, 2007; Watkins et al, 2007; Lynn & Yadav, 2015), and some of the inspiration for training approaches can be traced to the observation that performing certain tasks seems to be related to improved cognition. Training the domainspecific skills related to those tasks undeniably improves the task performance itself, there appears to be no transfer to domain-general cognitive abilities

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Conclusion