Cognitive Benefits of Playing Video Games

In two previous articles (here and here), I summarized evidence countering the common fears about video games (that they are addictive and promote such maladies as social isolation, obesity, and violence). I also pointed there to evidence that the games may help children develop logical, literary, executive, and even social skills. Evidence has continued to mount, since then, concerning especially the cognitive benefits of such games.

The most recent issue of the American Journal of Play (Fall 2014) includes an article by researchers Adam Eichenbaum, Daphne Bavelier, and C. Shawn Green summarizing recent research finding evidence of lasting positive effects of video games on basic mental processes—such as perception, attention, memory, and decision-making. Most of the research involves effects of action video games—that is, games that require players to move rapidly, keep track of many items at once, hold a good deal of information in their mind at once, and make split-second decisions.

Such research employs two strategies—correlational and experimental. In a correlational study, regular gamers are compared, on some perceptual or cognitive test, with otherwise comparable people who don’t play video games. The typical finding is that the gamers outperform the non-gamers on whatever test is used. This doesn't prove that gaming is a cause of better performance, because it is possible that people who choose to play video games are those who already have superior perceptual and cognitive abilities. The best proof that gaming improves these abilities comes from experiments in which all of the participants are initially non-gamers, and then some, but not others, are asked to play a particular video game for a certain number of hours per day, for a certain number of days, for the sake of the experiment. In these experiments, the typical finding is that those who play the video game improve on measures of basic perceptual and cognitive abilities while those in the control group do not.

In what follows, I’ll simply list some of the findings that have come from this sort of research, all of which are summarized in the article by Eichenbaum and his colleagues. The reference I cite for each finding is to the original research report.

Improvements in basic visual processes

• Improved visual contrast sensitivity. Fifty hours of action video game play (spread over 10 to 12 weeks) improved visual contrast sensitivity (the ability to distinguish subtle differences in shades of gray) compared to controls (Li et al., 2009).

• Successful treatment of amblyopia. Amblyopia (also called “lazy eye”) is a disorder arising from early childhood in which one eye becomes essentially non-functional. Li and colleagues (2011) performed experiments in which some adults with this disorder played action video games using only the bad eye (the good eye was covered). Other adults with the disorder did other things with the good eye covered, such as knitting or watching television. The result was that those in the gaming condition showed great improvement—often to normal or near-normal functioning—while those in the other conditions did not. Many in the gaming condition developed 20/20 vision or better in the previously “lazy eye,” and visual attention and stereoscopic vision (ability to coordinate input from the two eyes to see depth) were restored to normal.

Improvements in attention and vigilance

• Improved spatial attention. Green & Bavelier (2012) found that action video gaming improved performance on the ability to locate, quickly, a target stimulus in a field of distractors—a test that has been found to be a good predictor of driving ability.

• Improved ability to track moving objects in a field of distractors. Action games improved the ability of children and adults to keep track of a set of moving objects that were visually identical to other moving objects in the visual field (Trick et al., 2005).

• Reduced impulsiveness. Action games improved performance in a test of the ability to refrain from responding to non-target stimuli, in a situation in which most stimuli called for a response but an occasional stimulus called for no response (Dye, Green, & Bavelier, 2009).

• Overcoming dyslexia. Dyslexia, in at least some cases, seems to derive from problems of visual attention. One study found that as few as 12 hours of video game play improved dyslexic children’s scores on tests of reading and phonology (Franceschini et al, 2013). In fact, the improvement was as great or greater than that achieved by training programs that were explicitly designed to treat dyslexia.

Improvements in executive functioning

Executive functioning refers to a person’s ability to allot his or her mental resources (such as perception, attention, memory) in ways that allow for rapid, efficient problem solving or decision-making. Many experiments have shown positive effects of video-game training on measures of executive functioning. Here are two examples

• Improved ability to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously. Chiappe and colleagues (2013) found that 50 hours of experience on an action video game significantly improved performance on a test called the Multi-Attribute Task Battery, which is modeled after skills required in piloting aircraft. It involves using a joystick to keep a target centered on a screen, monitoring fuel levels, responding to lights on an instrument panel, and listening and responding to radio communication. High scores on this test correlate well with real-world piloting performance.

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• Increased mental flexibility. A number of researchers have reported that experience with action video games improves people’s abilities to switch rapidly and without error between tasks that have conflicting demands (Anderson et al, 2010; Green et al, 2012; Colzato et al, 2014).

• Reduction of mental decline that accompanies aging. Cognitive flexibility, attention, working memory, and abstract reasoning all tend to decline with age. Many experiments, with elderly participants, show that video game play can result in improvement in all of these abilities (e.g. Basek et al., 2008). One study found that such play led not just to cognitive improvements, but also to better self-concepts and enhanced qualities of life in elderly participants (Torres, 2011).

Improvements in job-related skills

Many studies indicate that video games improve job performance, especially for jobs that require good eye-hand coordination, attention, excellent working memory, and quick decision-making. One correlational study, for example, demonstrated that video gamers were better than non-gamers in the ability to fly and land aerial drones and were essentially as good as trained pilots on this skill (McKinley et al., 2011). Another correlational study revealed that young, inexperienced surgeons who were also avid video gamers outperformed the most experienced surgeons in their field (Rosser et al., 2007). In an experiment, novice surgeons who were provided with experience with video games improved their performance in laparoscopic surgery compared with a control group of surgeons who did not have that experience (Schlickum et al., 2009).

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If you are a parent who has been limiting your child’s computer play because of the claims you have read of harmful effects, the research summarized here and in my previous posts on video gaming might give you pause. The bulk of the research suggests that the claims about negative effects of video gaming are largely myths and that there are real positive effects. The kinds of mental skills that video games help to develop may be increasingly important in today's world.

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