Although AVGs are the most studied, other types of games, like real-time strategy games, have also been shown to affect cognition ( Glass, Maddox & Love, 2013). First-person shooter (FPS) games, in which the player has an egocentric view through his or her avatar’s eyes, have been the focus of many studies, as they were suspected to be the most likely genre of AVGs to influence cognition due to their high engagement of sensory, perceptual, and cognitive functions ( Spence & Feng, 2010). AVGs are also highly engaging and intrinsically motivating activities, making them attractive and popular ( Powers & Brooks, 2014). Although AVGs differ from one another, they all share four characteristics: a fast pace (moving objects, time constraints), a high perceptual load, a high degree of distraction, and a requirement for constant switching between focused and distributed states of attention ( Bediou et al., 2018). The rise in popularity of video games in the last 20 years has led to a surge of research examining their impact on the mind and brain, with a special focus on AVGs.
#NEUROTRACKER COMPARISONS PROFESSIONAL#
More than 117 schools in the United States offer competitive eSports programs and many professional leagues are experiencing growing audiences and revenues ( NACE, 2020 Newzoo, 2020).
![neurotracker comparisons neurotracker comparisons](https://s3.amazonaws.com/neurotrack-dot-com-assets/eyetracking.gif)
More recently, we have witnessed the emergence of the eSports industry, in which video gamers compete individually or in teams in national and international competitions. Action video games (AVGs) such as Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Fallout 4, Fortnite, and Overwatch, are among the most popular types of video games in the United States ( Statista, 2019). There is a wide variety of video game genres, including action, real-time strategy, fighting, adventure, role playing, and racing games. In the United States, the gamer population consists of more than 150 million individuals, representing a 17.7 billion dollar market ( Bediou et al., 2018 SpillGames, 2013 Statista, 2017). There were more than two billion video gamers worldwide in 2016 and this number is projected to increase to 2.7 billion by 2021 ( Statista, 2020). Future longitudinal studies of elite video game experts are required to determine whether the observed performance benefits of professional gamers may be due to their greater engagement in video game play, or due to pre-existing differences that promote achievement of high performance in action video games. Professional players also showed better speed thresholds in the 3D-MOT task overall, but the rate of improvement with training did not differ in the two groups. Professional players showed the largest performance advantage relative to Amateur players in a test of visual spatial memory (Spatial Span), with more modest benefits in a test of selective and sustained attention (d2 Test of Attention), and test of auditory working memory (Digit Span). We also examined participants’ ability to improve performance on a dynamic visual attention task that required tracking multiple objects in three-dimensions (3D-MOT) over five sessions.
![neurotracker comparisons neurotracker comparisons](https://www.mdpi.com/ijerph/ijerph-18-04862/article_deploy/html/images/ijerph-18-04862-g004.png)
#NEUROTRACKER COMPARISONS MANUAL#
We assessed 14 video game players who play in a competitive league (Professional) and 16 casual video game players (Amateur) on set of standard neuropsychological tests evaluating processing speed, attention, memory, executive functions, and manual dexterity.
![neurotracker comparisons neurotracker comparisons](https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1186%2Fs40814-021-00879-z/MediaObjects/40814_2021_879_Fig5_HTML.png)
In the current study, we sought to examine whether individuals who play video games at a professional level in the esports industry differ from amateur video game players in their cognitive and learning abilities. Until now, the vast majority of studies defined video game players based on the number of hours an individual spent playing video games, with relatively few studies focusing on video game expertise using performance criteria. Although many studies have found that video game players are better than non-players in multiple cognitive domains, other studies failed to replicate these results. In the past 20 years, there has been growing research interest in the association between video games and cognition.