Electronic Games, Cognitive Effects of

The cognitive effects of playing electronic games relate to information processing, gaining understanding, and acquiring knowledge. Thus far, research generally has focused on basic aspects of information processing. The established effects on the gamer's cognitive system are diverse and almost always positive. Cognitive effects found among groups of children and college students have included, for example, more focused visual attention, better spatial representation, and enhanced memory. Research on positive effects somewhat counterbalances the emphasis on negative effects. The recognition of the positive cognitive effects of gaming points to a vast educational potential inside, and particularly outside, the classroom.

[Page 266]The possible cognitive effects are very much dependent on the kind of electronic game that is played. Simple Internet games that can be completed in less than a minute may affect the basic modalities of information processing, in particular with respect to the visual and attentional systems. Today's complex 3-D games that require dozens of hours to reach the final goal may also influence more advanced cognitive skills, such as deductive reasoning, planning strategies, and decision making.

Research on the cognitive effects of electronic games has been dedicated largely to basic kinds of cognitive processing. Pioneering work was done in the early 1980s by Geoffrey Loftus and Elisabeth Loftus. In Mind at Play, they discussed the possible effects of the arcade games of that time on, for example, memory, attention, and eye-hand coordination. Research about cognitive effects was advanced in the 1990s by Patricia Greenfield and her colleagues. In their series of studies, the Greenfield team found effects of gaming on different aspects of the cognitive system.

A first effect was found with respect to spatial representation. This is a basic cognitive skill involved in dealing with two-dimensional images of a hypothetical two- or three-dimensional world. Greenfield and her team studied spatial representation in the context of a rather basic arcade game. Their 10- and 11-year-old participants were invited to play Marble Madness. The game involved guiding a marble along a three-dimensional grid. The results showed that spatial performance improved as a result of playing the game. The effect did not occur when children practiced on an electronic word game.

A second effect concerned iconic representation, the ability to read images. For most people, this ability is less well developed than verbal kinds of representation. The Greenfield team found that playing an electronic game shifted representational styles from verbal to iconic. Undergraduates from the United States and Italy played Concentration either on a computer or on a board. In the subsequent test, the participants were asked to describe a computer animation they had seen earlier. The computer gamers used more diagrams, an iconic kind of representation, whereas the board gamers used verbal descriptions.

A third effect occurred with respect to divided visual attention. Playing an electronic game requires that players keep track simultaneously of many stimuli at different locations in the visual field. This can be done only if players are able to quickly shift their attention from one set of information to another. One of the Greenfield studies confirmed that expert players of electronic games are better at dividing their visual attention than novices. The participants had to locate a target on the computer screen as rapidly as they could. When the target appeared in an unexpected location, expert players responded faster than novices. More recently, Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier tested visual attention and its spatial distribution in an experiment. One group with no earlier experience with electronic games was asked to play Medal of Honor, a rather complex 3-D war game that requires divided visual attention. The participants were trained for 1 hour per day for 10 consecutive days. A second group, the control group, played the puzzle game Tetris. It is less complex and does not appeal to divided visual attention, because it demands focus on one object at a time. After 10 days, only the Medal of Honor gamers showed a significant increase in their capacity for divided visual attention.

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