The Jury's Still Out: Gaming's Effect on Working Memory Capacity and Multitasking Ability

In yesterday's post, I discussed a study by Daphne Bavelier and C. Shawn Green that suggested playing action video games improves one's working memory and multitasking ability. Today, I will discuss a study that contradicts Green and Bavelier's work.

In the October 2008 issue of the journal Acta Psychologica, researchers Walter R. Boot, Arthur F. Kramer, Daniel J. Simons, Monica Fabiani, and Gabriele Gratton from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign published a study indicating that video games--action, strategy, and puzzle--do not produce significant gains in a variety of measures of cognitive performance. They did find that expert gamers performed significantly better on most tasks, but they suggest the difference might be due to preexisting cognitive advantages unrelated to video game experience. The major way that Boot et al.'s results contradict those of Green and Bevelier is that amateurs did not improve their performance on the tests of cognitive performance (more than non-video-game-playing control subjects) despite hours and hours of video game practice.

One task that Boot et al.'s study had in common with Green and Bevelier's study was the "enumeration" (a.k.a. counting) task. Green and Bevelier's results showed a statistically significant difference between the performance of subjects with video game practice and those without. In Boot et al.'s study, subjects who were expert video game players only performed slightly better than video game amateurs on the counting task, and with a p-value of 0.17, the difference was not statistically significant (Boot et al., 2008, p 392). More surprisingly, Boot et al.'s results showed no advantage on the counting task for amatuers after 21 hours of video game practice (relative to amateurs who didn't practice).

The other task I discussed in yesterday's post was multiple object tracking. Green and Bevelier found that practice playing action video games had a significant effect on subjects' ability to track multiple objects. Boot et al., however, found mixed results: Experts outperformed amateurs (significantly), but practice playing video games did not cause amateurs to improve any more than subjects who didn't practice playing video games at all.

It is important to note that comparing Green and Bevelier's study to Boot et al.'s study is not "apples to apples." Boot et al.'s experimental design differed significantly from Green and Bevelier's. For example, the subjects in Green and Bevelier's study were all male. In Boot et al.'s study, the expert gamers were all male, while the vast majority (75 out of 92) of the amateurs were female. Another important difference was that Green and Bevelier only tested their subjects' enumeration and object tracking abilities twice--a pre-test and a post-test. Boot et al. tested their subjects three times--a pre-test, a progress test, and a post-test. A third important difference is that Green and Bevelier measured only the quantity of objects that could be tracked accurately, while Boot et al. measured the speed and quantity of objects that subjects could track accurately. Regardless of experimental design differences, I am still surprised that the results weren't more similar.

This is the second study I've come across that showed playing video games doesn't cause people to improve their cognitive abilities. On the other hand, I've read nearly ten studies that suggest the opposite. At this point, I don't feel I have enough expertise to explain why different studies produce different results. Does it make a big difference whether subjects are male or female? Maybe, but I'm not familiar with enough research to prove it. Does it make a big difference when subjects take a cognitive test three times rather than two times? Maybe, but again, I'm not familiar with research on the effects of repeated testing to prove it. In any case, I am really baffled by the fact that amateurs who practiced playing video games didn't show more improvement on the cognitive tests than amateurs who had no video game practice. My gut tells me video game practice should have made a difference. Then again, my gut also tells me to overeat, so it's not always trustworthy!

Reference

Boot, W., Kramer, A., Simons, D., Fabiani, M., & Gratton, G. (2008, November). The effects of video game playing on attention, memory, and executive control. Acta Psychologica, 129(3), 387-398. Retrieved April 8, 2009, doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2008.09.005