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Cited by 15Cognitive Abilities and TestingNeural and Behavioral Psychology StudiesPersonal Information Management and User Behavior

The relationship between internet-gaming experience and executive functions measured by virtual environment compared with conventional laboratory multitasks

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Chen, Yong-Quan, Hsieh, Shulan·2018·PLOS ONE
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0198339PMC PMC5991639
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Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate if individuals with frequent internet gaming (IG) experience exhibited better or worse multitasking ability compared with those with infrequent IG experience. The individuals' multitasking abilities were measured using virtual environment multitasks, such as Edinburgh Virtual Errands Test (EVET), and conventional laboratory multitasks, such as the dual task and task switching. Seventy-two young healthy college students participated in this study. They were split into two groups based on the time spent on playing online games, as evaluated using the Internet Use Questionnaire. Each participant performed EVET, dual-task, and task-switching paradigms on a computer. The current results showed that the frequent IG group performed better on EVET compared with the infrequent IG group, but their performance on the dual-task and task-switching paradigms did not differ significantly. The results suggest that the frequent IG group exhibited better multitasking efficacy if measured using a more ecologically valid task, but not when measured using a conventional laboratory multitasking task. The differences in terms of the subcomponents of executive function measured by these task paradigms were discussed. The current results show the importance of the task effect while evaluating frequent internet gamers' multitasking ability.

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  • Un estudio encontró mayor rendimiento en situaciones multitarea en adictos al juego online, aunque únicamente en tareas ecológicas, frente a tareas artificiales de laboratorio (Chen et al., 2018).

    “un estudio encontró mayor rendimiento en situaciones multitareas en adictos al juego online , aunque únicamente en tareas ecológicas, frente a tareas artificiales de laboratorio (Chen et al., 2018).”

    From Adicciones a internet y funciones ejecutivas en estudiantes universitarios: una revisión sistemática (2020) · cites this paper as Chen et al., 2018

    The Discussion reports better multitasking performance among frequent internet gamers on a naturalistic task, but not on a conventional laboratory task. It also explicitly says the finding was not associated with internet addiction: participants above the addiction-scale cutoff were excluded, and the findings do not represent people with addictive behavior. Thus, the task comparison is supported, but the claim’s description of the participants as addicted gamers is not. (LLM, conf=0.89)

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Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Chen, Y.-Q., & Hsieh, S.
Affiliations
National Cheng Kung University (TW)
Corresponding author
Hsieh, Shulan
ORCID
Hsieh, Shulan
Venue
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2018-06-07
Volume
13
Issue
6
Pages
e0198339
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0198339
PMC
PMC5991639
OpenAlex
W2805152910
Cited by
15
References
6
Citations by year
2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 2
FWCI
0.98
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
Funders
Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (104-2420-H-006-004-MY2, 106-2420-H-006-005-MY2)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Personal Information Management and User Behavior
Keywords
online games, executive function, multitasking, dual-task performance, task switching, ecological validity, online game players, young adults
MeSH terms
Games, Recreational, Multitasking Behavior, Virtual Reality, Adult, Female, Humans, Male, User-Computer Interface, Internet, Young Adult, Executive Function

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