title: The effects of video game play on the characteristics of saccadic eye movements.
abstract: Video game play has become a common leisure activity all around the world. To reveal possible effects of playing video games, we measured saccades elicited by video game players (VGPs) and non-players (NVGPs) in two oculomotor tasks. First, our subjects performed a double-step task. Second, we asked our subjects to move their gaze opposite to the appearance of a visual target, i.e. to perform anti-saccades. As expected on the basis of previous studies, VGPs had significantly shorter saccadic reaction times (SRTs) than NVGPs for all saccade types. However, the error rates in the anti-saccade task did not reveal any significant differences. In fact, the error rates of VGPs were actually slightly lower compared to NVGPs (34% versus 40%, respectively). In addition, VGPs showed significantly higher saccadic peak velocities in every saccade type compared to NVGP. Our results suggest that faster SRTs in VGPs were associated with a more efficient motor drive for saccades. Taken together, our results are in excellent agreement with earlier reports of beneficial video game effects through the general reduction in SRTs. Our data clearly provides additional experimental evidence for an higher efficiency of the VGPs on the one hand and refutes the notion of a reduced impulse control in VGPs on the other.
authors.affiliation: Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Department of Cognitive Neurology (Oculomotor Lab), Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen, Otfried-Mueller-Str 27, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Mack
authors.affiliation: Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Department of Cognitive Neurology (Oculomotor Lab), Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen, Otfried-Mueller-Str 27, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany. Electronic address: uwe.ilg@uni-tuebingen.de.
authors.forename: Uwe J
authors.initials: UJ
authors.lastname: Ilg
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D018910:Video Games; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Anti-saccades; Attention; Latency; Main sequence; Saccade; Video game play