Made for English 211C in the Summer semester of 2025.

Research question: How do video games affect cognitive functions of adolescents and young adults?

Brilliant T D, Nouchi R, Kawashima R. Does Video Gaming Have Impacts on the Brain: Evidence from a Systematic Review. Brain Sci. 2019 Sep 25;9(10):251. doi: 10.3390/brainsci9100251. PMID: 31557907; PMCID: PMC6826942.

The article’s main purpose is to compound many different studies performed on how video games affect different areas and aspects of the brain. The first half of the article is spent talking about the criteria for if a study will be included or excluded. In this portion of the article, a list of the studies and their data is presented along with references to the full study and/or article presented later in the paper. This paper concluded that, in short, multiple areas of the brain are positively affected by video games, and that different areas are affected depending on the genre of game being played. The studies used focused on individuals with little to no video game experience or activity and a variety of ages. The main conclusion for age was that all ages are positively affected by these games in some way, but the extent of the change differs depending on the age of the person in question. This led to a secondary conclusion that children are more of an unknown quantifier as their brains are so volatile with growth. Due to the growth from these games being so similar to a maturing brain, it was hard for researchers to be able to tell how much the video games were affecting the brains of the children over their brains naturally maturing. This paper is useful as a reference for looking at what specific areas of the brain are being affected and changed by games, and how that might correlate back to the original research question.

Charles Reynaldo, Ryan Christian, Hansel Hosea, Alexander A S Gunawan, Using Video Games to Improve Capabilities in Decision Making and Cognitive Skill: A Literature Review, Procedia Computer Science, Volume 179, 2021, Pages 211-221, ISSN 1877-0509, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2020.12.027.

This paper was written to put together a list of other studies for people to reference and examine as well as compile the results into a baseline conclusion about how video games affect cognitive functions. The main conclusion is that video games positively affect cognitive performance depending on the game being played. Certain game genres impact certain parts of the brain more than others, and even then, some games in that genre have a stronger positive impact than others. This discrepancy could be due to a variety of factors that are trickier to explore and evaluate. Some of the studies used went beyond my topic of interest, and were about other aspects of the brain and its influence such as violence, aggression, and social activity. The conclusion, after looking through each study, was that there is both positive and negative data. However, the negative data could also be due to those negative feelings already existing in the individual and they choose to let them out using the game. There is no way to completely conclude this new idea, but there is little evidence to show that the game itself is causing those emotions and attitudes. This is due to the fact that there are many more instances of positive outcomes rather than the negative. This means either that these video games are capable of causing both and that the positive effects are much more likely than the negative, or that the negative effects are caused by some other source or were already present in the individual.

Choi, Eunhye, et al. “Commercial Video Games and Cognitive Functions: Video Game Genres and Modulating Factors of Cognitive Enhancement.” Behavioral and Brain Functions, vol. 16, no. 2, 3 Feb. 2020, behavioralandbrainfunctions.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12993-020-0165-z, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12993-020-0165-z.

This source focuses on compiling data from multiple sources over years prior to look for the specific ways that video games can and are beneficial. The main point shown in the articles was that the video game genre greatly changes the aspect of cognitive function that is affected. Some examples are action video games (AVG) being highly associated with selective attention and first person shooters (FPS) having improvements in top down processing. Other notable findings were that frequent video game players had better working memory than inconsistent players or those who played less frequently. Similar to the prior entry, a section of this article was dedicated to play time in the individuals used in each study. The writers noted that besides outliers like professional video game players, there were steady increases in improvement of cognitive function up until a certain point. After that, the returns become diminishing or have a slight drawback such as a slight decrease in accuracy. This article is extremely useful to my research paper as it draws conclusions about how different game genres affect different aspects of cognitive function based on prior research, and supports these claims by further specifying categories to accommodate for differences such as time played in each genre of game. 

Dye MW, Green CS, Bavelier D. Increasing Speed of Processing With Action Video Games. Curr Dir Psychol Sci. 2009;18(6):321-326. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01660.x. PMID: 20485453; PMCID: PMC2871325.

The main topic of this article was how action video games affect the visual processing speed of video game players, and do these games increase the failure rate at these tasks as a downside to the increased speed. To do this, researchers placed video game players (VGP) and novice video game players (NVGP) into tests that measure visual reaction time and compared the data. The conclusion that was reached was that regardless of the test performed, the VGP group was consistently faster to perform the task than the NVGP group. For accuracy, the researchers noted that it was virtually identical between both groups (92.75% vs 92.75%). This shows that, in visual based reaction tests, VGPs are consistently faster than NVGPs and no accuracy is lost. 

This source helps show that not only do action video games help increase the processing speed of individuals, but also that the accuracy of the actions performed is not worsened. This shows that there could be benefit to having younger children and adolescents play these games as it will be a net positive for their processing power in the long run. The conclusion raises the concern that other senses were not tested during this research, so the impact of these games overall is uncertain beyond that of visual processing. The researchers also point out that, due to the speed tests being around 2,000 milliseconds or faster, they are unsure how more complex tasks or responses are affected.

C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier. The Cognitive Neuroscience of Video Games. 2004

This paper is an older resource about the evolution of how researchers have studied and tried to explain how video games affect the minds of people in different age groups. The main goal of this paper is to explain how video games affect the cognitive functions of gamers vs non-gamers, how different age groups are affected in different ways, and how these increases in cognitive function can be of use in day-to-day life. The main methodology of most of the studies conducted and used by this paper were by separating people into two groups: gamers and non-gamers. Each side would do the same task at increasingly difficult levels to see how much of a difference there is between the groups. Some of these studies would also go back and take the non-gamer group, have them play a specific game for a set period of time, and reconduct the test to see how much of a benefit, if any, there was. While older, this paper is still useful as it can give us a foundation to build on including older sources to look at with newfound knowledge. This paper also helps with showing how far we have come in testing for these topics since its publication. While some of the data may be a bit outdated, the talking points and the reasoning behind the studies is still strong.

Jory Deleuze, Maxime Christiaens, Filip Nuyens, Joël Billieux, Shoot at first sight! First person shooter players display reduced reaction time and compromised inhibitory control in comparison to other video game players, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 72, 2017, Pages 570-576, ISSN 0747-5632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.02.027.

This study was designed to determine the effect different genres of games have on the reaction speed and inhibitory control of gamers. The study found that they were correct in that FPS gamers are generally faster in their reaction speed compared to MOBA and MMORPG gamers, but they also tend to make more mistakes. The researchers believe this is likely due to the game’s reward system. For instance, the FPS gamers are incentivized to act first as if they are actually in a life or death situation which would likely lead to mistakes in an experiment like this one. The experiment requiring the gamers to identify and respond to what they see while also stopping their action if the image changes color is what led to this discrepancy. In the end, this article is useful as it shows that different video games affect the brain in different ways. While FPSs are great for giving heightened reaction speed, they also impact the body’s natural ability to stop a repeated action if it has already begun. Granted, these occur in mere fractions of a second, but it is still an interesting look at the slight downsides or trade offs that some games have. 

Martinez, Léa, et al. “Video Games and Board Games: Effects of Playing Practice on Cognition.” PLOS ONE, vol. 18, no. 3, 27 Mar. 2023, p. e0283654, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283654, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283654.

This study was done to eliminate a recurring issue in prior studies on this topic: time and type of games used in the study. The researchers note how some studies had defined a gamer as someone who plays over 4 hours per week while others put those people into the non-gamer category. This could have potentially led to many broad differences in how effective video games actually are when it comes to improving cognitive functions. To solve this issue, the researchers took their participants and plotted their found data, excluding the outliers and problematic individuals (prior mental or drug condition mainly), in a graph to help visualize these findings. From here, they further would plot these points based on other factors such as age and education level to try and see discrepancies or patterns. It was found that many cognitive functions get improved from playing video games, but eventually a diminishing return or slight drawback appears. The researchers also noted that different games improved an individual’s scores on some tests more than others, furthering the idea that some games are more beneficial than others in certain tasks. This source is useful to my research as it addresses the more broad application of my topic with lots of data that is organized into many different categories. These categories, such as age, time played, genre of game played, and education level, help to point out the effects of video games in a variety of ways and how they affect a variety of groups.