Video game use correlates with shorter saccadic reaction times and higher peak velocities
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1
Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Germany
A recent study showed that 46% of German teenagers are consuming video games on a daily basis. In the scientific community the effects of video games have hence become an increasing field of research. Surprisingly, since saccades are overt shifts of attention and therefore can be used as a direct measurement for it, no efforts have been made to inquire their influences on oculomotor behavior.
Keeping this in mind, we hypothesized two things: First, video game players should show decreased saccadic reaction times (SRTs). Second, since video games often require fast reflexive responses, they might impinge upon the cognitive control of VGPs. This should be visible in an increased amount of reflexive saccades in the so called “anti-saccade task”.
We addressed these questions in 25 non-players and 30 players. In two different paradigms (“double-step task” and “anti-saccade task”) we enforced fast reflexive as well as voluntary saccades.
Over all, players showed significantly shorter SRTs than non-players in both paradigms. Reflexive and voluntary saccades were equally affected. This indicates faster early stage attentional processing. Despite the shorter SRTs, players didn’t express higher error rates, which contradict our notion of reduced cognitive control in players. In addition we found increased saccadic peak velocities in players. This was very surprising. Altered peak velocities were previously reported for saccades yielding different amounts of reward. So the increased peak velocities might be caused by some sort of reinforcement learning in the video game which rewards faster responses.
Keywords:
Decision Theory,
Eye Movements,
reaction times
Conference:
Neural Coding, Decision-Making & Integration in Time, Rauischholzhausen, Germany, 26 Apr - 29 Apr, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Neural Coding, Decision-Making & Integration in Time
Citation:
Mack
DJ and
Ilg
UJ
(2012). Video game use correlates with shorter saccadic reaction times and higher peak velocities.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
Neural Coding, Decision-Making & Integration in Time.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2012.86.00009
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Received:
12 Jan 2012;
Published Online:
16 Jan 2012.
*
Correspondence:
Mr. David J Mack, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Tübingen, Germany, david-jule.mack@student.uni-tuebingen.de