Differences In Attentional Control And Cognitive Mechanisms Between Action Video Game Players And Non-players In College Students

In the area of attention,many studies have confirmed that action video game players have better attention control than non-players,but the psychological mechanism behind is still vague,and previous studies have conflicting results.A paradigm often used in this type of research is the flanker task,but it has some potential logical problems.The main research objectives of this study are as follows:(1)Test whether the two presentation modes of this paradigm will cause differences in the behavioral results of the subjects;(2)To verify whether the perceptual load theory can explain the advantage of attention control among action video game players;(3)On the basis of predecessors,further expand the upper limit of perceptual load to explore the scope of application of perceptual load theory in this phenomenon.In order to answer the above problems,the following three experiments are designed:Experiment 1 takes college students with fewer action video games experiences as subjects,and uses the flanking interference paradigm to measure the subjects' performance.The results show that compared with the presentation method of prompt circles,when the presentation method is filled with dots,the correct rate is higher,but the response time is slower.Experiment 2 used action video game players and non-players as subjects,and selected filled dots as the display method to measure the subjects' performance in the flanker task.The results show that players are better than non-players in overall response time and accuracy,but there is no significant difference between non-players in flanker effects.Experiment 3 used same standard subjects and same display method as exp2,but extended the highest perceptual load to 7 additional disturbances.The result is similar to experiment 2.Conclusions are as follow:(1)In terms of reaction time and accuracy,action video game players perform better,which shows that players' overall attention control ability is indeed stronger than non-players.(2)The flanker effect cannot be used as an indicator to measure the player-non-player attention control mechanism.(4)The player's attention control advantage may exist at the lower level of the attention process,which is a basic and universal effect.