Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States.
Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Cognition. 2018 Apr;173:93-105. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.01.006.
This research reports the existence of enhanced cognitive states in which dramatic temporary improvements in temporal and spatial aspects of attention were exhibited by participants who played (but not by those who merely observed) action video-games meeting certain criteria. Specifically, Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that the attentional improvements were exhibited only by participants whose skills matched the difficulty level of the video game. Experiment 2 showed that arousal (as reflected by the reduction in parasympathetic activity and increase in sympathetic activity) is a critical physiological condition for enhanced cognitive states and corresponding attentional enhancements. Experiment 3 showed that the cognitive enhancements were transient, and were no longer observed after 30 min of rest following video-gaming. Moreover, the results suggest that the enhancements were specific to tasks requiring visual-spatial focused attention, but not distribution of spatial attention as has been reported to improve significantly and durably as a result of long-term video-game playing. Overall, the results suggest that the observed enhancements cannot be simply due to the activity of video-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" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975) or "peak experiences" (Maslov, 1962). The findings provide empirical evidence for the existence of the enhanced cognitive states and suggest possibilities for consciously accessing latent resources of our brain to temporarily boost our cognitive capacities upon demand.
这项研究报告了增强认知状态的存在，即在满足某些标准的动作视频游戏中，参与者表现出显著的暂时性的注意的时间和空间方面的提高，而仅仅观察游戏的参与者则没有表现出这种提高。具体来说，实验 1 和 2 表明，只有那些技能与视频游戏难度水平相匹配的参与者才会表现出注意力的提高。实验 2 表明，唤醒（反映在副交感神经活动的减少和交感神经活动的增加）是增强认知状态和相应注意力提高的关键生理条件。实验 3 表明，认知增强是短暂的，在视频游戏后休息 30 分钟后，这种增强就不再观察到了。此外，结果表明，这种增强是特定于需要视觉空间注意力的任务的，而不是像长期玩视频游戏那样显著和持久地提高的空间注意力分配。总的来说，结果表明，观察到的增强不能仅仅归因于视频游戏本身的活动，而可能代表了一种增强的认知状态，这种状态是由特定的条件（高度的唤醒与积极的参与和最佳的挑战相结合）产生的，与先前现象学文献中描述的“流”（Csikszentmihalyi，1975）或“高峰体验”（Maslov，1962）相吻合。这些发现为增强认知状态的存在提供了经验证据，并为有意识地利用我们大脑的潜在资源来暂时提高我们的认知能力提供了可能性。
