Specific Effects of Action Video Games on Perception and Attention

SPECIFIC EFFECTS OF ACTION VIDEO GAMES ON PERCEPTION AND ATTENTION A Dissertation by Christopher Michael Brown Master of Arts, Wichita State University, 2009 Bachelor of Arts, Wichita State University, 2006 Submitted to the Department of Psychology and the faculty of the Graduate School of Wichita State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2012 © Copyright 2012 by Christopher Michael Brown All Rights Reserved SPECIFIC EFFECTS OF ACTION VIDEO GAMES ON PERCEPTION AND ATTENTION The following faculty members have examined the final copy of this dissertation for form and content, and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a major in Psychology. ______________________________________________________ Evan Palmer, Committee Chair ______________________________________________________ Alex Chaparro, Committee Member ______________________________________________________ Barbara Chaparro, Committee Member ______________________________________________________ Rui Ni, Committee Member ______________________________________________________ Nancy Bereman, Committee Member Accepted for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences ______________________________________________________ William Bischoff, Dean Accepted for the Graduate School ______________________________________________________ J. David McDonald, Dean iii DEDICATION To my parents and my wife iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Evan Palmer for motivating me to do research on a topic that I truly enjoy and for the years of support and guidance. I would also like to thank the members of my committee, Alex Chaparro, Barbara Chaparro, Rui Ni, and Nancy Bereman for their valuable comments and suggestions and for their interest in this project. v ABSTRACT Many research studies have established that playing action video games can lead to visual attention and perception benefits for the player. This dissertation pioneers the use of custom designed video game levels to determine if a single aspect of action video game play has specific effects on the player. In the following studies, specific aspects of action video games can indeed be isolated and thus potentially used as training tools for targeted perceptual benefits. Experiment 1 demonstrates that just two hours of training in a custom designed video game world that emphasizes friend vs. foe discrimination benefits players’ ability to focus on relevant visual information, and leads to marginally decreased flanker interference and marginally improved filtering capacity. Experiment 2 examines the beneficial effects of dispersed vs. narrowly focused attention in a second custom designed video game world. After two hours of game play, players in the dispersed attention condition significantly increased their visual working memory capacity and ability to allocate attention to peripheral items. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 HOW VIDEO GAMES AFFECT PERCEPTION AND ATTENTION ........................................................... 5 2.1 General Effects of Video Game Play .................................................................................................. 6 2.1.1 Response Mapping and Hand-Eye Coordination ............................................................... 7 2.1.2 Executive Control ............................................................................................................................ 9 2.1.3 Instantaneous Attentional Capacity ..................................................................................... 11 2.1.4 Sustained Attentional Capacity ............................................................................................... 15 2.1.5 Spatial Resolution of Attention ............................................................................................... 18 2.2 Methodological Considerations and Precautions .................................................................... 20 2.2.1 Cross-Sectional Studies (Correlational in Nature) ......................................................... 20 2.2.2 Training Studies (Causal in Nature) ..................................................................................... 23 32.3 Transfer of Training ............................................................................................................................ 27 FRIEND VS. FOE DISCRIMINATION AND VISUAL INFORMATION PROCESSING ....................... 30 3.1 Experiment 1 Introduction/Motivation ...................................................................................... 31 EXPERIMENT 1 ....................................................................................................................................................... 32 3.2 Method ....................................................................................................................................................... 36 3.2.1 Participants ..................................................................................................................................... 36 3.3 Apparatus ................................................................................................................................................. 38 3.3.1 Pre-/Post-Test Tasks: ................................................................................................................. 38 3.3.2 Video Game Training Levels .................................................................................................... 38 3.4 Stimuli ........................................................................................................................................................ 39 3.4.1 Pre-/Post-Test Tasks .................................................................................................................. 39 3.4.2 Video Game Training Worlds .................................................................................................. 44 3.4.3 Design of Game Levels (Practice) .......................................................................................... 47 3.4.4 Design of Game Levels (Training) ......................................................................................... 49 3.5 Procedure ................................................................................................................................................. 51 3.6 Results ........................................................................................................................................................ 53 3.7 Discussion .................................................................................................................................................... 62 3.7.1 Experiment 1 Limitations ............................................................................................................. 66 FOCUSED VS. DISPERSED ATTENTION AND VISUAL INFORMATION PROCESSING ............... 68 4.1 Experiment 2 Introduction/Motivation .......................................................................................... 68 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Chapter Page EXPERIMENT 2 ....................................................................................................................................................... 70 4.1 Method ....................................................................................................................................................... 72 4.1.1 Participants ..................................................................................................................................... 72 4.2 Apparatus ................................................................................................................................................. 73 4.2.1 Pre-/Post-Test Tasks .................................................................................................................. 73 4.2.2 Video Game Training Levels .................................................................................................... 73 4.3 Stimuli ........................................................................................................................................................ 73 4.3.1 Pre-/Post-Test Tasks .................................................................................................................. 73 4.3.2 Video Game Training Worlds .................................................................................................. 76 4.3.3 Design of Game Levels ................................................................................................................ 78 4.4 Procedure ................................................................................................................................................. 82 4.5 Results ........................................................................................................................................................ 82 4.6 Discussion ................................................................................................................................................ 88 4.6.1 Experiment 2 Limitations ............................................................................................................. 92 GENERAL DISCUSSION .......................................................................................................................................

Load more