Gaming to see: action video gaming is associated with enhanced processing of masked stimuli
Open accessAbstract
Recent research revealed that action video game players outperform non-players in a wide range of attentional, perceptual and cognitive tasks. Here we tested if expertise in action video games is related to differences regarding the potential of shortly presented stimuli to bias behavior. In a response priming paradigm, participants classified four animal pictures functioning as targets as being smaller or larger than a reference frame. Before each target, one of the same four animal pictures was presented as a masked prime to influence participants' responses in a congruent or incongruent way. Masked primes induced congruence effects, that is, faster responses for congruent compared to incongruent conditions, indicating processing of hardly visible primes. Results also suggested that action video game players showed a larger congruence effect than non-players for 20 ms primes, whereas there was no group difference for 60 ms primes. In addition, there was a tendency for action video game players to detect masked primes for some prime durations better than non-players. Thus, action video game expertise may be accompanied by faster and more efficient processing of shortly presented visual stimuli.
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Male young adults who engaged in video game play for at least 8-10 h per week over the past year exhibited faster reaction times and heightened sensitivity to briefly presented visual stimuli.
“One study of male young-adults reported that those who engaged in video game play for at least 8–10 h per week over the past year exhibited faster reaction times and heightened sensitivity to briefly presented visual stimuli [33].”
From Health Benefits of Video Games in Adolescents and Young Adults (2026) · cites this paper as [33]
The Participants section identifies a sample of male adults aged 18–29 and defines players as having played at least 8–10 hours per week during the past year. The Discussion reports faster reaction times for players, but describes their better detection of briefly presented masked stimuli as tentative, exploratory evidence limited to the tested presentation durations; the claim states that finding too firmly. No page numbers are provided in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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“One study of male young-adults reported that those who engaged in video game play for at least 8–10 h per week over the past year exhibited faster reaction times and heightened sensitivity to briefly presented visual stimuli [33 ].”
- Authors
- Pohl, C., Kunde, W., Ganz, T., Conzelmann, A., Pauli, P., & Kiesel, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Würzburg (DE)
- Esslingen University of Applied Sciences (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Pohl, Carsten
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2014
- Volume
- 5
- Pages
- 70-70
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3913992
- OpenAlex
- W2072849818
- Cited by
- 40
- References
- 61
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 2.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Online Publication Service of Würzburg University (Würzburg University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (1964/7-1, Ku 1964/7-1)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
- Keywords
- action video games, video game expertise, response priming, congruency effect, visual processing speed, attentional bias, visual perception, prime duration
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