Van Mier Hanneke I, Jiao Hui
Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Exp Brain Res. 2020 Dec;238(12):2769-2781. doi: 10.1007/s00221-020-05931-7. Epub 2020 Sep 29.
Spatial representation in the haptic domain has been shown to be prone to systematic errors. When participants are asked to make two bars haptically parallel, their performance deviates from what would be veridically parallel. This is hypothesized to be caused by the bias of the egocentric reference frame. Stimulating the use of an allocentric reference frame has previously been shown to improve performance in haptic parallelity matching. The aim of the current study was to investigate the influence of action video game experience on parallelity performance. We hypothesized that participants who extensively play action video games with a so-called 'bird's-eye view' are likely to process spatial information more allocentrically, resulting in better performance in haptic parallelity matching. This was tested in two groups of male participants, 10 participants with extensive action video gaming experience (AVGPs) and 10 participants without or hardly any action video gaming experience (NAVGPs). Additionally, the effect of visual-haptic practice on haptic parallelity performance was tested. In the haptic blocks, blindfolded participants had to feel the orientation of a reference bar with their non-dominant hand and had to match this orientation on a test bar with their dominant hand. In subsequent visual-haptic blocks, they had full view of the set-up and visually paralleled both bars. As hypothesized, AVGPs performed significantly better in haptic blocks than NAVGPs. Visual-haptic practice resulted in significantly better performance in subsequent haptic blocks in both groups. These results suggest that playing action video games might enhance haptic spatial representation, although a causative relationship still needs to be established.
触觉领域中的空间表征已被证明容易出现系统性错误。当要求参与者通过触觉使两根棒平行时，他们的表现与真正平行的情况存在偏差。据推测，这是由以自我为中心的参照系偏差所致。先前的研究表明，刺激使用以客体为中心的参照系可提高触觉平行度匹配的表现。本研究的目的是调查动作电子游戏体验对平行度表现的影响。我们假设，大量玩具有所谓“鸟瞰视角”动作电子游戏的参与者可能更倾向于以客体为中心处理空间信息，从而在触觉平行度匹配中表现更佳。我们对两组男性参与者进行了测试，一组是10名有丰富动作电子游戏经验的参与者（AVGP），另一组是10名没有或几乎没有动作电子游戏经验的参与者（NAVGP）。此外，还测试了视觉 - 触觉练习对触觉平行度表现的影响。在触觉阶段，蒙眼的参与者要用非优势手感受参考棒的方向，并用优势手在测试棒上匹配该方向。在随后的视觉 - 触觉阶段，他们可以看到整个装置，并通过视觉使两根棒平行。正如所假设的，AVGP在触觉阶段的表现明显优于NAVGP。视觉 - 触觉练习使两组在随后的触觉阶段表现都显著提高。这些结果表明，玩动作电子游戏可能会增强触觉空间表征，尽管因果关系仍有待确立。
