The influence of action video game playing on eye movement behaviour during visual search in abstract, in-game and natural scenes

Azizi, Elham; Abel, Larry A.; Stainer, Matthew J. · 2016 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/s13414-016-1256-7

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Summary

This study investigates whether playing action video games alters overt visual attention, specifically eye movement behavior during visual search tasks. While previous research indicates that action gaming improves visual attention metrics like reaction time and accuracy, it remains unclear if these benefits translate to how individuals select information from their visual environment through eye movements. The authors aimed to determine if action-game training modifies fixation duration, saccade amplitude, or the spatial distribution of fixations across abstract, game-related, and naturalistic scenes. The research employed two complementary approaches. In Experiment 1, 40 nongamers were randomly assigned to either an action-game training group (playing *Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II*) or a control group (playing *Free Cell*) for 10 hours over two weeks. In Experiment 2, the pre-training eye movement data of these nongamers were compared against data from 20 experienced action gamers. Participants performed five visual search tasks: an abstract conjunctive search, counting people in game screenshots, counting people in natural city scenes, and searching for embedded Gabor patches in both game and city images. Eye movements were recorded using an Eyelink II tracker, and statistical analyses included mixed ANOVAs and t-tests to assess changes in fixation duration, saccade amplitude, and the horizontal and vertical spread of fixations. The results indicated that action-game training did not significantly alter fixation durations or saccade amplitudes in any of the tasks. Furthermore, there were no significant differences in these metrics between the trained nongamers and the experienced gamers. However, a specific change in search strategy was observed in the action-game-trained group during the game-related people-counting task. This group exhibited a significant reduction in the vertical distribution of fixations post-training, suggesting they learned the likely spatial distribution of targets (enemies) within the game environment. This narrowing of search was not observed in the control group, nor did it transfer to the natural city scene tasks or the abstract search tasks. Experienced gamers also did not differ significantly from nongamers in fixation duration or saccade amplitude. The findings suggest that while action video game training can induce specific, context-dependent changes in visual search strategies—such as learning where targets are likely to appear in game-like scenes—it does not produce general modifications in overt attention allocation. The lack of transfer to natural scenes and the absence of changes in basic eye movement metrics imply that the perceptual benefits of action gaming may not extend to the fundamental mechanisms of eye guidance or information selection in everyday visual tasks.

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Topics

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• visual search
• eye movements scanning