Visuospatial experience modulates attentional capture: evidence from action video game players.
Visuospatial experience, the prolonged engagement in a demanding visual task, obtained through action video game play enhances several visual and cognitive processes. The underlying mechanisms involved in these processes, however, remain unclear. Here we demonstrate that experience with action video games modulates early sensory processing, resulting in increases sensitivity to salient visual events that capture attention. In two experiments, we show using a Temporal Order Judgment (TOJ) and a Signal Detection Paradigm (d') that action video game players show greater sensitivity to exogenous sensory events in the visual array. These results suggest that visuospatial experience modulates the earliest sensory aspects of visual processing.
West
Greg L
GL
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. greg.west@utoronto.ca
Stevens
Sara A
SA
Pun
Carson
C
Pratt
Jay
J
D001288:Attention; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013028:Space Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D013998:Time Perception; D018910:Video Games; D014785:Vision, Ocular; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult