Video Games and Spatial Cognition

TLDR

Video games can alter brain and behavior, yet far transfer of such effects remains elusive and is only beginning to be understood. This review examines how video games modify spatial cognition, explores early research into learning mechanisms, and proposes that such studies can inform new spatial skill teaching methods. The authors survey studies on video game impacts on spatial cognition and outline initial investigations into the underlying learning mechanisms and their potential applications. Action games improve sensory, perceptual, and attentional abilities—including contrast sensitivity, spatial resolution, visual field, enumeration, multiple‑object tracking, and visuomotor coordination—and also enhance complex spatial tasks like mental rotation, evidencing far‑transfer learning.

Abstract

Video game enthusiasts spend many hours at play, and this intense activity has the potential to alter both brain and behavior. We review studies that investigate the ability of video games to modify processes in spatial cognition. We outline the initial stages of research into the underlying mechanisms of learning, and we also consider possible applications of this new knowledge. Several experiments have shown that playing action games induces changes in a number of sensory, perceptual, and attentional abilities that are important for many tasks in spatial cognition. These basic capacities include contrast sensitivity, spatial resolution, the attentional visual field, enumeration, multiple object tracking, and visuomotor coordination and speed. In addition to altering performance on basic tasks, playing action video games has a beneficial effect on more complex spatial tasks such as mental rotation, thus demonstrating that learning generalizes far beyond the training activities in the game. Far transfer of this sort is generally elusive in learning, and we discuss some early attempts to elucidate the brain functions that are responsible. Finally, we suggest that studying video games may contribute not only to an improved understanding of the mechanisms of learning but may also offer new approaches to teaching spatial skills.