Problematic mobile gamers have attention bias toward game social information

Abstract

Attention bias towards game information influences players' problematic mobile game usage (PMGU). Social experience is an important part of games. This study aimed to explore attention bias mechanisms of problematic mobile gamers for game social information. Experiments 1 and 2 recruited 68 participants (19.82 ± 1.38 years), and used the dot-probe task to investigate attention bias among problematic mobile gamers. Results showed that reaction time and trial-level bias scores (TL-BS) of socially anxious problematic mobile gamers toward game social information were not significantly different from those toward game non-social information. Experiment 3 recruited 35 participants (19.71 ± 1.18 years), and combined eye-tracking technology with the dot-probe task to investigate problematic mobile gamers' attention bias and dynamic visual processing. Results of this last experiment showed that socially anxious problematic mobile gamers’ first fixation latency for game social information was significantly shorter than for game non-social information, and their gaze duration and total fixation duration were significantly longer for social than game non-social information. In summary, the eye tracking experiments give support for the idea that socially anxious problematic mobile gamers show attention bias towards game social information, which is presented as the vigilance-maintenance pattern.