Boosting Cognitive Capabilities through Enhanced States during Gaming
(Room S320F)
27 Nov 18
5:00 PM
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5:30 PM
We report on the existence of enhanced cognitive states - states characterized by dramatic temporary improvements in focused attention, as measured by an attentional blink task. In Experiment 1, significant attentional improvements were exhibited by participants who played action video-game (First-Person Shooter), and whose skills matched the level of the video-game (optimal challenge), but not by those who were over challenged or under challenged. Furthermore, using EKG (electrocardiography) methodology, we showed that arousal, indicated by withdrawal from parasympathetic activity and activation of the sympathetic nervous system, is a necessary physiological condition underlying the enhanced cognitive states. In Experiment 2, we showed that participants who played high-arousal collaborative physical puzzle game (such as Escape Room, in which a team of players solve a series of puzzles meeting certain criteria) exhibited similar enhanced cognitive states to the group of FPS video-gamers who were optimally challenged in Experiment 1. In contrast, participants who played a low-arousal computerized puzzle game, such as Tetris, did not exhibit such attentional enhancements, despite their active engagement in the game.
Overall, the findings provide the experimental evidence for the existence of the enhanced cognitive states through high-arousal gaming experiences. In particular, the results suggest that the observed attentional enhancements cannot be simply due to the activity of gaming per se, but might rather represent an enhanced cognitive state resulting from specific conditions (heightened arousal in combination with active engagement and optimal challenge), resonant with what has been described in previous phenomenological literature as “flow” or “peak experience”. The enhanced cognitive states are expected to be universal across domains that involve first-person focused attention activities (e.g., painting, drawing, meditation). The finding of this research sugges