The Impact Of Motion Video Games On Spatial Navigation Capabilities

Since its appearance, video games have become the main entertainment for the different groups of people,in particular the proportion of young people’s leisure activities are increasing.The use of online video game and the length of game is also a manifestation of the dependence on video games. Long exposure in the game environment is likely to have a different impact on the player’s attention,cognitive ability. In recent years,domestic scholars pay more attention to the relationship between violent games and aggressive behavior and prosocial behavior,lack attention on the positive impacts of variety of game types. Only foreign scholars have studied the relationship between other types of games and cognitive ability,and acquired some achievement.In addition, studies have proved that action video games can improve the abilities of spatial attention and spatial cognitive. Spatial attention is a fundamental ability of spatial cognition,and spatial navigation is a large scale routh-finding behavior of spatial cognition. In virtual game environment,players often transform in different situations, and make rapid reaction,which requires a good way to route-finding and spatial navigation. Therefore, on the basis of foreign research,this article assumes if the players are exposured to the game environment,their ability of spatial navigation will be improved.Based on the research of video game at home and abroad,this paper used the method of questionnaire and experimental measurement and selected the undergraduate and graduate students as subjects to explore the effects of action video games on spatial attention,spatial cognition and spatial navigation. This paper divided the subjects into the action video game player and non-player by strict screening,then designed three experiments: useful field of view,mental rotation,and spatial navigation,to measure the performance of players and non-players on the these three tasks.Research results show:(1)In the useful field of view task,the accuracy of player’s target location is significantly higher than of the non-players under all the eccentricity,the accuracy is the highest when the eccentricity is 10 degrees,and the accuracy is lowest when the eccentricity is 30 degrees.(2)In the mental rotation task,the speed and accuracy of player’s mental rotation are higher than of the non-player.The speed and accuracy is the highest when the rotation angle is 0,the speed of accuracy is lowest when the rotation angle is 30.(3)In the spatial navigation test,the error distance of player is significantly lower than of the non-player under three types of navigation,among them the error distance is the least when player is under the self and environmental reference navigation,the error distance is biggest when non-player is under the environmental reference navigation.The conclusions from the three experiments shows that the performance of action video game players is better than the non-players under all tasks,showing the action video game can improve the ability of spatial attention ,spatial cognition and spatial navigation.