Citation

West GL, Al-Aidroos N, Pratt J. Acta Psychol. 2012; 142(1): 38-42.

Affiliation

University of Toronto, Canada. Electronic address: greg.west@utoronto.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.08.005

PMID

23220058

Abstract

Action video games have been shown to affect a variety of visual and cognitive processes. There is, however, little evidence of whether playing video games can also affect motor action. To investigate the potential link between experience playing action video games and changes in oculomotor action, we tested habitual action video game players (VGPs) and non-video game players (NVGPs) in a saccadic trajectory deviation task. We demonstrate that spatial curvature of a saccadic trajectory towards or away from distractor is profoundly different between VGPs and NVGPs. In addition, task performance accuracy improved over time only in VGPs. Results are discussed in the context of the competing interplay between stimulus-driven motor programming and top-down inhibition during oculomotor execution.

Language: en