Action Video Game Training for Healthy Adults: A Meta-Analytic Study

Abstract

Action video game (AVG) has attracted increasing attention from both the public and from researchers. More and more studies found video game training improved a variety of cognitive functions. However, it remains controversial whether healthy adults can benefit from AVG training, and whether young and older adults benefit similarly from AVG training. In the present study, we aimed to quantitatively assess the AVG training effect on the cognitive ability of adults and to compare the training effects on young and older adults by conducting a meta-analysis on previous findings. We systematically searched video game training studies published between January 1986 and July 2015. Twenty studies were included in the present meta-analysis, for a total of 313 participants included in the training group and 323 participants in the control group. The results demonstrate that healthy adults achieve moderate benefit from AVG training in overall cognitive ability and moderate to small benefit in specific cognitive domains. In contrast, young adults gain more benefits from AVG training than older adults in both overall cognition and specific cognitive domains. Age, education, and some methodological factors, such as the session duration, session number, total training duration, and control group type, modulated the training effects. These meta-analytic findings provide evidence that AVG training may serve as an efficient way to improve the cognitive performance of healthy adults. We also discussed several directions for future AVG training studies.

Cognition-Oriented Treatments for Older Adults: a Systematic Overview of Systematic Reviews

“…Interventions. In all, 34 reviews reported meta-analytic results for cognitive training (Table 1), covering a variety of cognitive training approaches, including computerized training Hill et al, 2017;Hoefler, 2016;Lampit, Hallock, & Valenzuela, 2014;Shao et al, 2015;Tetlow & Edwards, 2017), memory training (das Nair, Cogger, Worthington, & Lincoln, 2016;Floyd & Scogin, 1997;Gross et al, 2012;Hudes, Rich, Troyer, Yusupov, & Vandermorris, 2019;Martin et al, 2011;Metternich et al, 2010), working memory training (Melby-Lervag & Hulme, 2016; Weicker, Villringer, & Thone-Otto, 2016) and videogames (Toril, Reales, & Ballesteros, 2014;P. Wang et al, 2016).…”

A new look at the cognitive neuroscience of video game play

“…). Attempts to systematically determine whether playing AVGs benefits cognitive performance via meta‐analytic approaches have documented a consistent cognitive benefit in quasiexperimental studies . In short, individuals who report playing 3 or more hours per week of action video games, and having done so for at least the past 6 months, outperform individuals classified as NVGPs on a wide variety of cognitive tasks.…”

“…Attempts to systematically determine whether playing AVGs benefits cognitive performance via meta-analytic approaches have documented a consistent cognitive benefit in quasiexperimental studies. 60,[64][65][66][67][68][69][70] In short, individuals who report playing 3 or more hours per week of action video games, and having done so for at least the past 6 months, outperform individuals classified as NVGPs on a wide variety of cognitive tasks. However, as discussed above, whether AVGPs perform better on these cognitive tasks because they play action video games, or whether they chose to play action video games because they excel at this type of game play from the get-go, can only be answered through intervention studies.…”

Cognition-oriented treatments for older adults: A systematic overview of systematic reviews

“…In all, 34 reviews reported meta-analytical results for CT (Table 1), covering a variety of CT approaches, including computerized training (Gates, Rutjes, et al, 2019;Gates, Vernooij, et al, 2019;Hill et al, 2017;Hoefler, 2016 Wang et al, 2016). Three reviews focused on CS (C. Cooper et al, 2012;Kim et al, 2017;Woods et al, 2012).…”