Abstract
Research has shown that playing action games is effective in promoting abilities for visual attention tasks. However, it is unclear whether the advantages of playing these games are wider peripheral vision (PV), a greater ability to process information, or a greater PV ability. This study aims to investigate the characteristics and advantages regarding the eye movements of action video game players (AVGPs) during a visual search comprising 154 participants in Experiment 1 and 166 participants in Experiment 2. The results show that compared with non-video game players (NVGPs), AVGPs have a significant time advantage in visual search tasks, with a shorter response time and fixation duration. Further, this advantage is not present unconditionally in central vision (CV) and PV but is only apparent with cues; that is, AVGPs show a greater ability to use cues. Especially in CV with cues, the saccade velocity of AVGPs is significantly faster than that of NVGPs. The results also show that AVGPs have a significant advantage in visual searching, which is mainly reflected in their use of cues and their saccade velocity of eye movement behavior in CV.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 19BSH112]; Chongqing Research Program of Basic Research and Frontier Technology [cstc2018jcyjAX0480], and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant no. SWU1909226].
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The Human Investigations Committee of Southwest University approved this research. All participants were recruited through an online advertisement and volunteered to participate in the experiment. Prior to the formal experiment, the participants had a detailed understanding of the procedure and the payment. And the tasks were prior to the consent of participants, they had the right to terminate the experiment if, for example, they felt unwell.
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Li, J., Zhou, Y. & Gao, X. The advantage for action video game players in eye movement behavior during visual search tasks. Curr Psychol 41, 8374–8383 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03017-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03017-x