The Rise of the Mad Dog Gamer
A mad dog gamer is my affectionate description of someone who plays between 35 and 45 hours of action video games a week. There is some interest in understanding the cognitive needs of this group and more to the point, how that much gaming impacts their cognition. Found a blog post that nicely summarizes some of the key preliminary findings so far.
Mad dog gamers have:
1. Increased visual processing ability (reaction to rapidly appearing events or objects in the visual field)
2. Normal reactive attention control (engaging attention just in time as event occur).
3. Decreased proactive attention control (managing your own attention to stay engaged in activities or events that are not automatically engaging).
And of course there are the recent studies that suggest a positive correlation between being addicted to game play and ADD but the causation is far from clear.
Finding 3 is very interesting. Some worry that it will make these folks less effective in the classroom and the workplace. On the other hand, their demand for “low mental load” experiences and products might force us to make a bigger investment in cognitive design.
