The Cognitive Flexibility Of Action Video Game Players:Passive Dissipation Or Activepreparation

Video game play has existed more than 50 years since its birth and been a ubiquitous part of daily life,now,even has become a cultural phenomenon.It was predicted that a young person would spend about 10000 h gaming by age 21 in average.This intense exposure is bound to have effects on the development of brain and behaviors.Indeed,previous studies have found that video games,especially action video games(AVG),could improve individuals' performance in terms of perception,attention,and cognitive control.Cognitive control is essential for individuals to complete goal-directed behaviors.Task switch,one of the important functions of cognitive control,refers to allow individuals to flexibly switch between different tasks to achieve goal-directed behaviors,which reflect individuals' cognitive flexibility.However,maybe due to the differences of the task switch paradigms themselves,such as different degree of interference between the two tasks of task switching task,the validity of prompts,the dissipation time of previous task set,and the preparation time of current task set,it has yet reach a consensus on cognitive flexibility of AVG players.In addition,existing research on cognitive control of internet gaming disorder mainly focuses on inhibition control,few studies have examined the cognitive flexibility of them and few studies have specially examined this question relevant to action video game addicts.Although it is reasonable to conclude that the cognitive flexibility of action video game addicts will be worse than ordinary people,the characteristics of action games(continuously changing the priority of actions in a short period of time to achieve the goal of game success)seem to be very suitable for training the cognitive flexibility of players.For action game addicts,whether playing AVG for a long time will improve or damage their cognitive flexibility remains to be further investigated.Based on the above,the present study aimed to examine systematically examine to what extent passive dissipation of previous tasks(exogenous control)and active preparation of current tasks(endogenous control)will influence the potential differences of cognitive flexibility(i.e.switch cost)between AVG players and non-gamers,by means of manipulating the degree of interference between the two task of task switching task,the validity of prompts,the dissipation time of previous task set,and the preparation time of current task set,and comparing with the recreation gaming users(RGU),the internet gaming disorders(IGD)and non-gamers(NG).This study consists of three parts: Experiment 1 used a task switching task with univalent stimuli,and manipulates the validity of prompts,RCI,and CSI,to examine what extent the exogenous control and endogenous control would influence the group differences of switch cost when the interference between two tasks was low.Results showed: the group difference on switch cost only existed in some certain condition.specifically,when performing the inferior task,the group difference only existed when exogenous control existed solely and restrainedly(CSI=100ms,RCI=100ms,cue=invalid),the switch cost of IGD was lower than NG,no differences between IGD and RGU of between RGU and NG.While performing the superior task,the group difference only existed when the endogenous preparation was sufficient(CSI=1000ms,RCI=100ms,cue=valid),the switch costs of IGD and RGU were lower than NG,no difference between IGD and RGU.Experiment 2 adopted a prompt task switching task with bivalent stimuli,and manipulates the RCI and CSI simultaneously.Results showed: the group difference on switch cost only existed in some certain condition.specifically,the switch cost of IGD was higher than RGU,no difference between RGU and NG or between IGD and NG under the most interferential and insufficient condition(CSI=100ms,RCI=100ms).When extent the CSI to 1000ms(i.e.CSI=1000ms,RCI=100ms),the switch cost of RGU was lower than NG significantly,no differences between RGU and IGD or between IGD and NG.Experiment 3 adopted a non-prompt task switching task with bivalent stimuli,and manipulated the RSI,to examine what extent the exogenous control would influence the group differences of switch cost when the interference between two tasks was high.Results showed: the group difference only existed in condition in which there was enough time to dissipate the interference of two tasks(i.e.RSI=3000ms),the switch cost of IGD was lower than RGU and NG,no difference between RGU and NG.These results may suggest that the smaller switch cost(i.e.better cognitive flexibility)of IGD may be associated with better exogenous control of IGD,especially in tasks where more cognitive resources would be involved.the smaller switch cost(i.e.better cognitive flexibility)of RGU may be associated with better endogenous control of RGU,especially in condition where sufficient endogenous preparation was available.The ability to use clue information to selectively attention on task-related stimuli of RGU will be better than NG.AVG experiences is likely to exercise the ability of reactive control rather than proactive control in IGD,and vice versa in RGU.