title: Facilitation or disengagement? Attention bias in facial affect processing after short-term violent video game exposure.
abstract: Previous research has been inconsistent on whether violent video games exert positive and/or negative effects on cognition. In particular, attentional bias in facial affect processing after violent video game exposure continues to be controversial. The aim of the present study was to investigate attentional bias in facial recognition after short term exposure to violent video games and to characterize the neural correlates of this effect. In order to accomplish this, participants were exposed to either neutral or violent video games for 25 min and then event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during two emotional search tasks. The first search task assessed attentional facilitation, in which participants were required to identify an emotional face from a crowd of neutral faces. In contrast, the second task measured disengagement, in which participants were required to identify a neutral face from a crowd of emotional faces. Our results found a significant presence of the ERP component, N2pc, during the facilitation task; however, no differences were observed between the two video game groups. This finding does not support a link between attentional facilitation and violent video game exposure. Comparatively, during the disengagement task, N2pc responses were not observed when participants viewed happy faces following violent video game exposure; however, a weak N2pc response was observed after neutral video game exposure. These results provided only inconsistent support for the disengagement hypothesis, suggesting that participants found it difficult to separate a neutral face from a crowd of emotional faces.
authors.affiliation: The Lab of Mental Health and Social Adaptation, Faculty of Psychology, Research Center of Mental Health Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.|Key Laboratory for Neuro Information of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Center for Information in Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Yanling
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: The Lab of Mental Health and Social Adaptation, Faculty of Psychology, Research Center of Mental Health Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Haiying
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lan
authors.affiliation: The Lab of Mental Health and Social Adaptation, Faculty of Psychology, Research Center of Mental Health Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Zhaojun
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Teng
authors.affiliation: The Lab of Mental Health and Social Adaptation, Faculty of Psychology, Research Center of Mental Health Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Cheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Neuro Information of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Center for Information in Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Dezhong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yao
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D018910:Video Games / Q000523:psychology*; D014754:Violence; D055815:Young Adult