Daphne Bavelier, C. Shawn Green, Alexandre Pouget and Paul Schrater Brain Plasticity Through the Life Span: Learning to Learn and Action Video Games Daphne Bavelier, C. Shawn Green, Alexandre Pouget and Paul Schrater Rishav Raj Agarwal Arpit Agarwal

Benefits of Action Game Really?

Vision Action videogame play enhances Crowding acuity spatial resolution temporal resolution sensitivity. Crowding acuity

Cognitive Functions Benefits social cognition Enhanced task-switching abilities Enhance mental rotation abilities

Decision Making Speeds up reaction time Young laparoscopic surgeons who are gamers outperform more seasoned surgeons Game play does not result in trading speed for accuracy

Causality Hawthorne effect Effects of action video game play are causal or are instead reflective of population bias

Learning to Learn

Resources All tasks require subjects to make a decision based on a limited amount of noisy data Enhanced resources: Benefit from greater attentional resources Divided attention: The ability to divide attention between tasks or locations Sustained attention and impulsivity. Flexible resourse allocation

Learning Rule Action game play leads to more accurate probabilistic inference Action game playing may act by enabling more generalizable knowledge through various abstractions VGPs show greater suppression of distractors under extremely high load conditions Development of more generalizable knowledge as one is faced with new tasks or new environments.

Conclusion

Action game play does not teach any one particular skill Increases the ability to extract patterns or regularities in the environment Learning to learn Changes in knowledge produce benefits only to the extent to which new tasks share structure with action video games.

References

Bavelier D, Achtman RA, Mani M, Foecker J. 2011 Bavelier D, Achtman RA, Mani M, Foecker J. 2011. Neural bases of selective attention in action video game players. Vis. Res. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2011.08.007 Bavelier D, Levi DM, Li RW, Dan Y, Hensch TK. 2010. Removing brakes on adult brain plasticity: from molecular to behavioral interventions. J. Neurosci. 30:14964–71

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