UCLA

Video games have become ubiquitous as 21st century entertainment media, but the effects of such an immersive visual experience are an area of active research. Action video games (AVGs), a genre that commonly encompasses first-person shooter (FPS) and third-person shooter games, have been a particular focus for the video game research field given their unique combination of time pressure, speed, and challenge. Research has suggested that AVGs may benefit a wide variety of visual skills ranging from low-level perceptual skills such as orientation discrimination and contrast sensitivity function, to higher-level skills such as multiple object tracking or attentional blink. These promising results have spurred interest in using video games for skill training or even for medical treatment of visual disorders. However, the exact range and limitations of AVG training is still widely unknown, and there continues to be active debate in the field over which visual skills AVGs can transfer to. Furthermore, the mechanisms by which AVGs affect vision are still unknown. A related field of research, visual perceptual learning (VPL), may be able to offer insight into the limitations and the mechanisms of AVG transfer given that VPL is a field that has long investigated the mechanisms and limitations of low-level visual learning. Therefore, in this dissertation, I combined the perspectives of both fields in order to investigate AVG transfer further. First, I compared AVG to psychophysics training as typically used in VPL research, which allowed me to quantify the effects of AVG transfer to low-level visual skills (Study 1). This study demonstrated that AVG training did not transfer to motion discrimination tasks, as psychophysics training resulted in significantly more transfer. Second, I investigated the ability of AVG training to transfer to untrained regions of the visual field, and did not find any significant difference between trained and untrained visual field (Study 2). Both studies also served to further test the limitations of AVG transfer to lower-level visual skills, which have been less frequently investigated in AVG literature compared to higher-level visual skills. I did not find evidence of significant AVG transfer to any of the visual tasks tested, suggesting that AVGs, while widely considered to be beneficial for attention-based visual tasks, may not be as beneficial for lower-level visual perception. These results suggest that AVGs may affect vision via higher-level mechanisms, which would have implications for further determination of how AVGs may affect various visual skills or be used in practical application.