DOOM'd to switch: superior cognitive flexibility in players of first person shooter games

Colzato, Lorenza S. · 2010 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00008

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Summary

This study investigates whether experience with First Person Shooter (FPS) video games enhances general cognitive flexibility, specifically the ability to switch between different mental tasks. While previous research has highlighted the negative social concerns surrounding violent games, fewer studies have examined potential cognitive benefits. FPS games require players to rapidly react to dynamic visual and auditory stimuli and frequently switch between subtasks. The authors hypothesized that this gaming experience would generalize to improved performance on established cognitive-control tasks, particularly task-switching paradigms. The researchers compared two groups of 17 young healthy adults each: Video-Game Players (VGPs) and Non-Video-Game Players (NVGPs). VGPs were required to play video games at least four times a week for a minimum of six months, primarily FPS titles such as *Call of Duty* and *Unreal Tournament*. NVGPs had little to no gaming experience. Both groups were matched for age and intelligence quotient (IQ), measured using Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices. Participants performed a task-switching experiment using Navon stimuli, which consist of global shapes composed of smaller local shapes. Participants were cued to respond to either the global or local dimension of the stimulus. The design included training blocks and an experimental block where participants switched between tasks. Reaction times and error rates were recorded to calculate switching costs, defined as the difference in performance between task repetition and task alternation trials. The results demonstrated that VGPs exhibited significantly smaller switching costs than NVGPs, indicating superior cognitive flexibility. Specifically, VGPs showed faster reaction times on switch trials compared to NVGPs, while performance on repetition trials did not differ significantly between groups. This suggests that gaming experience selectively improves performance in conditions requiring high cognitive control. No significant differences were found between the groups in overall reaction time, error rates, age, or IQ. The analysis also confirmed standard task-switching effects, such as slower responses for local targets and incongruent stimuli, but these effects did not interact with group membership. The findings support the conclusion that FPS gaming is associated with enhanced cognitive flexibility, specifically in reducing residual switching costs likely related to the suppression of interfering task sets. The authors suggest that VGPs may be more efficient at controlling episodic memory structures to update task sets. While the study is correlational and cannot rule out self-selection biases, it aligns with prior research showing causal benefits of action games on visual attention. The authors propose that these cognitive enhancements could have societal relevance, such as using video games to train executive control in aging populations to compensate for cognitive decline.

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• executive function