Among other abilities, successful classroom learning requires ignoring distractions in the environment, overriding automatic impulses and emotional reactions, and directing cognition and behavior toward goal achievement. At the center of these abilities are executive functions (EFs), which refer to those cognitive processes that underlie controlled, goal-directed cognition and behavior. EFs are a collection of interrelated yet distinguishable components, which include the updating of working memory (monitoring and adding/deleting items from working memory), inhibitory control (overriding automatic responses), and shifting (switching between different mental tasks) (Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, Howerter, & Wager, 2000).
Studies show that individual differences in EFs in early childhood uniquely contribute to future academic achievement (e.g., Cameron et al., 2012) and to classroom behavior (e.g., Riggs, Blair, & Greenberg, 2003). In light of its important role in school functioning, researchers have investigated various strategies to boost children’s EFs with the hope that this will transfer to improvements in learning and academic achievement (Diamond & Lee, 2011). This chapter focuses on one nascent area of research that investigates the utility of interactive video games in improving EFs. This brief review differs from previous ones on the effects of video games on cognitive and brain function (e.g., Bavelier, Green, Pouget, & Schrater, 2012). First, the focus of this review is specifically on the effects of video gaming on EFs, rather than on multiple aspects of cognition. Second, traditional sedentary games (i.e., games played via button presses on a handheld controller or keyboard) and exergames (i.e., games played via gross motor movements of the upper and lower body) will be considered. Third, the focus will be on children and adolescents (though research on younger and older adults will be included where applicable).
(p.43) Sedentary Video Gaming
Examination of the positive effects of interactive video gaming on cognition dates back several decades. Greenfield (1984) argued that video games (at that time, they were largely confined to public arcade games such as Pac-Man) engage the player in cognitively and visually complex experiences that require substantial visuospatial processing, cognitive flexibility, and an ability to deduce rule structures. As these demands increase with progression through the game levels, interactive video games could have been training certain visualspatial and cognitive skills; however, Greenfield cautioned that while it is possible that these skills may transfer to other domains outside of video gaming expertise, this proposition was far from a foregone conclusion.
Researchers continue to explore these issues brought up by Greenfield nearly three decades ago, and in recent years, researchers have begun to address the specific question of whether video game playing enhances EFs. Much of this research has focused on action video games, which contain high perceptual, cognitive, and motor loads and include fast-paced first-person shooter games such as Halo and Call of Duty. The high cognitive loads of these games likely place demands on EFs, such as maintaining and rapidly manipulating information in working memory (e.g., “What is my current task in the game and how does my task change once I achieve X?”) and shifting between different task sets (e.g., “When confronted with enemy X, I should do Y, and when confronted by enemy W, I should do Z”).
The EF most frequently studied in video game studies is shifting, which is assessed by having participants respond repeatedly to one dimension of an object when one cue is present (e.g., when the background is blue, they must respond to the color of the object); later they respond to an alternative dimension when a different cue is present (e.g., when the background is yellow, they must respond to the shape of the object). Participants typically experience a switch cost when the mental set changes; for example, they respond more slowly and less accurately when they transition from responding to an object’s color to responding to its shape. Cross-sectional research indicates that self-reported action video game players (AVGPs; those who report ≥ 5 hours per week of action game play) have superior shifting ability, as indicated by smaller switch costs, compared to non-action game players (nAVGPs; those who report little or no action game play) (Andrews & Murphy, 2006; Boot, Kramer, Simons, Fabiani, & Gratton, 2008; Cain, Landau, & Shimamura, 2012; Colzato, van Leeuwen, van den Wildenberg, & Hommel, 2010; Green, Sugarman, Medford, Klobusicky, & Daphne, 2012; Karle, Watter, & Shedden, 2010). Importantly, improved shifting appears not to be confined to manual responses (which may result from more efficient mapping of a stimulus to a manual response that would occur from heavy use of a handheld controller) but generalizes to the vocal modality (Green et al., 2012, Experiment 1).
(p.44) Given the correlational nature of the above results, it could be that individuals with better shifting are more likely to be successful at active video games and therefore more likely to become regular players, or it may be that AVGPs differ from nAVGPs on some other, unaccounted for, dimension. Thus, training studies that randomly assign nAVGPs to either training on action video games or to an active control condition in which slower-paced games are used (e.g., puzzle or simulation games) are needed to establish a causal link between action gaming and improved shifting ability. One study has shown that 50 hours of training on active video games marginally improves shifting in comparison to an equivalent amount of time training on slower-paced games (Green et al., 2012, Experiment 4). A second study found no effect of 20 hours of active game training on shifting (Boot et al., 2008), perhaps suggesting that 20 hours of active video game play is insufficient for enhancing the shifting component of EF.
Other EFs have been studied less frequently. In one correlational study, AVGPs outperformed nAVGPs in updating of working memory but not in inhibitory control (Colzato, van den Wildenberg, Zmigrod, & Hommel, 2012), whereas in a second study, AVGPs did not show improved updating of working memory (Boot et al., 2008). A third study showed that AVGPs have an advantage at controlling visual attention and inhibiting eye movements to interfering stimuli (Chisholm & Kingstone, 2011). While it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from these limited studies, it is important to note that some of the inconsistencies in results may arise from differences in EF tasks used. For example, both Colzato and colleagues (2012) and Chisholm and Kingstone (2011) assessed inhibitory control generally speaking, but it can be argued that the ability to override a previously activated motor response (assessed in the Colzato study) is quite different from selectively attending to target stimuli while inhibiting visual attention to irrelevant stimuli (assessed in the Chisholm study). Whereas the former ability likely relies more on reactive control (i.e., implementing inhibitory control processes after stimulus presentation), the latter would require proactive control (i.e., the ability to maintain top-down control throughout the task), and as argued by Chisholm and Kingstone, AVGPs appear to show superiority in top-down proactive control, but not in reactive control.
In addition to considering the methodological issues that may give rise to inconsistent results, researchers should attempt to formulate unifying theories that account for what effects video gaming may have on EFs. One noteworthy example is recent work by Green, Bavelier, and colleagues (Bavelier et al., 2012; Green & Bavelier, 2012), in which the authors posit that playing high-paced action video games improves the player’s ability to use task-relevant information and ignore irrelevant information, which in turn permits the player to learn more quickly and efficiently from the environment. This improved ability to “learn to learn” would likely benefit multiple aspects of cognition, including EFs, such as the ability to shift between mental sets and to quickly learn new rule structures (as needed in shifting tasks). Whether improved “learning to learn” accounts for (p.45) differential effects on EFs (e.g., between proactive and reactive inhibitory control) should be considered in future research.
All of the aforementioned research was conducted with young adults, typically university students. Given the importance of EFs both in childhood development and in the aging process (Best, Miller, & Jones, 2009), determining whether video games can positively affect EFs at both ends of the lifespan will be valuable. To date, few studies have been conducted in these populations. One study with older adults examined the effects of training on a real-time strategy game (Rise of Nations) on EFs (Basak, Boot, Voss, & Kramer, 2008). Real-time strategy games are not quite as fast-paced or as violent as action video games (and therefore may be more positively received by older adults), but they do require constant engagement through maintaining and manipulating game priorities in working memory and shifting between these priorities. For example, in Rise of Nations players must balance between engaging in activities that bolster their offense, defense, and their economy. Older adults who trained on this game for 23.5 hours over 4–5 weeks demonstrated improved shifting and updating of working memory compared to a no-treatment control group. The results may suggest that training on real-time strategies games can help prevent or slow down cognitive aging by preserving EFs; however, given the lack of an active control group, it is difficult to conclude that the positive effects were due specifically to video game playing and not to some other factors (e.g., the social interaction inherent in completing a laboratory study—that is, the Hawthorne effect).
Studies with children and adolescents are also limited. Two correlational studies reported that youth with significant video game experience show improved multiple-object tracking (Trick, Jaspers-Fayer, & Sethi, 2005), which relies in part on the updating of working memory, but greater interference from incongruent visuospatial stimuli (Dye, Green, & Bavelier, 2009), which relies in part on inhibitory control. In this latter study, the authors argue that the increased interference effect in AVGPs may not necessarily reflect a decrement in inhibitory control but instead may reflect a greater spread of attention, that is, enhanced processing of peripheral stimuli by AVGPs. This argument is based on the fact that AVGPs were not slower than nAVGPs at processing interfering stimuli; instead, AVGPs responded more slowly than would be expected based on their overall faster visual processing compared to nAVGPs.
To my knowledge, no training studies have been conducted with children using entertainment video games like action video games or real-time strategy games. However, several training studies have tested the effects of playing computerized cognitive training games on children’s EFs. Cognitive training games are interactive games designed to target specific cognitive processes and improve those processes via repeated and progressively more challenging tasks. The most common cognitive training games target working memory by having children attempt to maintain and manipulate more and more information in working memory over successive game levels. These games are similar (p.46) to traditional video games in that they are interactive and played with a keyboard or remote, but differ in that their primary focus is not entertainment, and therefore, they often have limited game elements (e.g., narrative, variety of game content). Recent meta-analyses of computerized cognitive training studies (Melby-Lervag & Hulme, 2012; Wass, Scerif, & Johnson, 2012) suggest that while these games often yield short-term improvements to the targeted EFs (suggesting near transfer), there is inconsistent evidence that these improvements result in far transfer to more generalized abilities (e.g., verbal ability) or academic achievement (e.g., arithmetic skills).
Although it is far from clear that cognitive training games have a robust effect across the developmental spectrum, these meta-analyses provide some evidence that younger children benefit from this type of training more so than older children or adults, perhaps indicating sensitive periods in earlier development during which training may have a more robust effect—both in terms of far transfer and of long-term maintenance of the effect. There is also some tentative evidence that cognitive training that incorporates more game elements (i.e., training that appears more like a entertainment video game) improves children’s motivation to complete the training and induces greater transfer than cognitive training without these elements (Prins, Dovis, Ponsioen, ten Brink, & van der Oord, 2011). Thus, future research should examine whether games that incorporate the elements of entertainment games (narrative, rapid visual and cognitive processing, variety of content) and of cognitive training games (adaptive training of specific EFs such as working memory) have stronger effects on EFs than games that do not have this combination of elements. Moreover, studies using large age ranges are needed to determine whether sensitive periods of robust training effects truly exist.
It should be noted that sedentary video games are not without their potential negative effects. Some correlational research suggests that video game experience may be associated with poorer inhibitory control in young adults (e.g., Bailey, West, & Anderson, 2010) and with greater impulsiveness and attention problems in children and adolescents (e.g., Gentile, Swing, Lim, & Khoo, 2012). Furthermore, youth may be more prone to overeat while playing sedentary video games compared to doing other activities (Lyons, Tate, Ward, & Wang, 2012), which may contribute to the increases in childhood obesity over recent decades. As Gentile (2011) recently argued, video games are neither all good nor all bad; rather, some elements of video games may contribute to positive outcomes, whereas others may contribute to negative outcomes. Rigorous study of these elements is needed to better understand what types of games will have positive or negative effects, for what populations of players, in what amounts, and in what contexts. Overall, interventions aimed to improve children’s EFs should likely use a diversity of strategies, perhaps including certain types of sedentary video games.
(p.47) Exergaming
Exergames are a relatively new genre of video games that require gross motor movements (e.g., swinging the arms; running in place) instead of or in addition to the traditional button presses of sedentary video games. One of the most iconic exergames, Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), was introduced in the late 1990s and requires the player to mimic dance steps presented on the video screen in rhythm with various musical selections (Behrenshausen, 2007). In its original form, DDR was a stand-alone arcade game that used pressure-sensitive footpads to sense the player’s movement. In recent years, DDR and other exergames have become available for home use as a result of advances in sensor technologies. In 2006 Nintendo introduced the Wii, which uses a wireless remote embedded with accelerometers and optical sensors to measure arm motion and rotation. Along with additional peripherals (e.g., a pressure-sensitive response pad), the Wii remote allows players to engage in whole-body movement to execute moves for their virtual characters. More recently, Microsoft introduced the Kinect as an add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 console, which uses optical sensing to track the movement of players in three dimensions and translates whole-body movement into virtual activity. This obviates an external controller altogether. The prevalence of exergaming in youth has increased concurrently with increasing sophistication and diminishing costs of exergame consoles. Indeed, recent representative surveys indicate that between 25% and 40% of adolescents in the U.S. and Canada play exergames on a regular basis (Fulton, Song, Carroll, & Lee, 2012; O’Loughlin, Dugas, Sabiston, & O’Loughlin, 2012).
Exergames have many of the perceptual and cognitive demands of action video games but also have significant physical demands through their requirement of gross motor movement. These physical demands could also contribute to the player’s EFs in light of the following. First, experimental research indicates that physical activity (PA), both in acute and chronic forms, improves children’s cognitive function, especially their EFs (for a review, see Best, 2010). Second, children with greater physical fitness show better EFs than children with poor physical fitness (Hillman, Buck, Themanson, Pontifex, & Castelli, 2009). Third, there are close interrelations among the biological pathways underlying energy metabolism, motor control, and cognition, which suggests that an individual’s brain functions optimally when that individual maintains a certain level of PA (Vaynman & Gomez-Pinilla, 2006).
To date, only three studies have examined the effects of exergames on children’s EFs. Two of these studies tested normally developing children (Best, 2012; Staiano, Abraham, & Calvert, 2012), and one tested children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Anderson-Hanley, Tureck, & Schneiderman, 2011). All three studies tested the acute effects of active video gaming on EFs, that is, the effects immediately following a bout of gaming. In the first study, Best (p.48) (2012) determined whether an exergame that contained significant cognitive engagement (i.e., a Wii game that became progressively more difficult as the child mastered easier elements) has a stronger impact on children’s inhibitory control than an exergame without significant cognitive engagement (i.e., a Wii game that required only repetitive running in place). The results demonstrated that playing either exergame for approximately 25 minutes enhanced children’s inhibitory control compared to watching a video or playing a sedentary video game for an equivalent period of time, suggesting that the increases in arousal induced by the physical demands of exergaming may contribute more to the immediate improvement to this EF than do the priming effects caused by the cognitive demands. Staiano and colleagues (2012) examined whether playing competitive versus cooperative exergames have different effects of adolescents’ EFs. After completing 10 weeks of training on Wii EA Sports in either a cooperative or competitive fashion, the participants played the game one last time for 15 minutes and then completed EF assessments that primarily assessed shifting. Participants in a control condition received no training during the 10-week period and completed the EF assessment following a 5-minute period of sitting. In support of the primary hypothesis, adolescents who played the exergame in a competitive fashion showed improvements in EF compared to adolescents in either the cooperative exergame or control conditions. However, counter to the researchers’ predictions, adolescents who played the cooperative exergame did not demonstrate improved EF in comparison to adolescents who were in the control condition. The authors argue that playing the exergame in a competitive fashion may place stronger demands on EF than would playing in a cooperative fashion (see Decety, Jackson, Sommerville, Chaminade, & Meltzoff, 2004), leading to a significant improvement to EF performance following competitive exergaming only. As both these studies show, exergames can serve as a useful experimental tool to test the effects on children’s EFs of different types of gaming experiences (e.g., playing games with significant cognitive engagement versus limited cognitive engagement; playing games in a competitive versus cooperative fashion).
In the third study, Anderson-Hanley and colleagues (2011) examined the effects of exergaming on the EFs and repetitive behaviors of children and adolescents diagnosed with ASD. Along with significant difficulties in social interaction and verbal and nonverbal communication, children with ASD often show repetitive behavior, such as repeating the same phrase over and over or obsessively lining up toys. In two separate pilot studies, the researchers found that playing DDR or playing a cybercycle game (a stationary bike connected to an interactive video game) for 20 minutes reduced repetitive behavior and improved the updating of working memory relative to watching a 20-minute video. The researchers suggest that the reductions in repetitive behavior may be mediated in part by improvements to EFs caused by exergaming.
To date, the limited experimental research with children and adolescents has examined the immediate effects of exergaming on EFs. (See also Gao & Mandryk, (p.49) 2012, and O’Leary, Pontifex, Scudder, Brown, & Hillman, 2011, for acute exergaming studies with young adults). While more research is needed in this realm, future research should also examine the chronic effects of exergaming that occur after a period of training. Chronic exergaming may lead to long-term changes to brain structure and neurophysiology, leading to enduring effects on players’ EFs. For example, Staiano and colleagues had adolescents train on an exergame for 10 weeks; however, the researchers examined shifting performance immediately after playing the exergame, which disallows teasing apart the chronic from the acute effects.
Two studies with older adults have tested the effects of chronic exergaming (i.e., exergame training) and are germane to the current discussion. In one study, Maillot, Perrot, and Hartley (2012) tested whether exergame training improves physical and cognitive functioning in sedentary older adults. Participants in the treatment group played a variety of exergames on the Nintendo Wii in pairs and individually during two 1-hour sessions per week for 12 weeks. Participants in the control condition were asked to maintain their sedentary lifestyles for the duration of the study. Not only did participants in the training group improve on several measures of physical fitness and functioning (e.g., number of arm curls, distance covered during a 6-minute walk), they also showed gains in multiple EFs as well as in processing speed in comparison to the no-treatment control. In a second study, Anderson-Hanley and her colleagues (2012) examined whether exergame training for three months has a stronger impact on older adults’ EFs compared to traditional PA training of an equal period of time. The researchers found that participants in the treatment group (playing a cybercycle game on average three sessions per week) demonstrated greater benefits to the three primary EFs (i.e., inhibitory control, updating of working memory, and shifting) compared to older adults who participated in training on a traditional stationary bike. Participants in the treatment group also showed greater concentrations of brain-derived neurotropic factor in the blood, which is a protein that promotes neuroplasticity in the brain. Importantly, both groups showed similar fitness gains as a result of PA training, which suggests that the cognitive demands and the interactive nature of cybercycling may have contributed to the improvements in EFs and brain health beyond the benefits provided by enhanced physical fitness. An important next step will be to conduct similar training studies in children to determine whether the interactive and cognitively demanding nature of exergaming can provide additional benefits to EFs over noninteractive forms of PA.
Concluding Thoughts: Transfer to Academics?
As highlighted at the start of this chapter, EFs are important to academic achievement and uniquely predict children’s future academic success. This chapter has presented tentative evidence from nascent areas of research that both traditional (p.50) sedentary video games and exergames may bolster EFs at various times in the lifespan. An important next step—applicable to all age groups but especially to children—is to determine whether video games could improve academic outcomes via improved EFs. This research differs from other lines of research that look at whether video games can teach certain educational content important to academic outcomes; instead, this research would examine whether playing certain video games (not necessarily games with explicit educational content) has an effect on academic outcomes mediated by changes in EFs.
To my knowledge, only training studies using cognitive training games have begun to test this possibility. Loosli, Buschkuehl, Perrig, and Jaeggi (2012) found that two weeks of training on an interactive computer game that emphasized working memory improved reading ability in typically developing 9- to 11-year-olds. Similarly, Chein and Morrison (2010) found that four weeks of working memory training improved reading comprehension in young adults, which appeared to be mediated by improvements in working memory from pre- to posttest. However, a limitation of both studies is that the control group received no sort of intervention, and therefore, the improvements in the training groups may be due to some factors unrelated to the training per se (e.g., a Hawthorne effect). Video game training may be most beneficial for those individuals who present with poor EFs. For example, one study (Holmes, Gathercole, & Dunning, 2009) demonstrated that six weeks of computerized working memory training improved mathematics performance in children with poor working memory. Importantly, this effect was found in comparison to a nonadaptive version of the training program (i.e., the difficulty remained low throughout the 6-week training period), suggesting that the adaptive, interactive nature of the game caused the positive effect on academic achievement. An interesting aspect of this study was that the effect on mathematics was not evident immediately following training, but instead six months afterwards. The authors argue that there may be a time lag during which the improvement in EFs translates into improvement in academic achievement.
Exergaming may also have an effect on academic outcomes mediated by improved EFs. In part, this could occur via mechanisms described above; that is, similar to sedentary games, certain cognitive demands may boost EFs, and in turn, academic achievement. Additionally, the physical demands of exergaming may influence academic outcomes. This possibility arises from experimental evidence that both acute physical activity (Hillman, Pontifex, Raine, Castelli, Hall, and Kramer, 2009; Pontifex, Saliba, Raine, Picchietti, & Hillman, 2012) and chronic physical activity (Davis et al., 2011) improve children’s academic achievement, in addition to improving their EFs. Another possibility is to combine educational games with exergames to teach specific academic content in a physically active fashion. Previous research has shown that implementing a physically active curriculum in the classroom improves academic achievement beyond a traditional, sedentary curriculum (Donnelly & Lambourne, 2011).
(p.51) In general, much more research is needed to examine the effects of sedentary and active video games on EFs, and in turn, on academic outcomes. This research is especially lacking in children and adolescents. When feasible, future research should use randomized, controlled designs that engage children in specific types of interactive gaming experiences to address questions with important theoretical and practical implications. Some questions relate specifically to the type of video game experience: Do fast-paced, action video games have the strongest effects on EFs or do games that train children to maintain more and more information in working memory work better? Should games combine elements from multiple genres? Would games that require physical exercise be best? Other questions relate to developmental and individual differences: Do younger children gain more benefits than older children? Do children with EF deficits benefit more than children without such deficits? Still others involve the causal relations between EFs and academic achievement: If certain video game experiences improve EFs, do these improvements translate into improved academic achievement generally or to improvements in specific aspects of academic achievement? Are these effects evident immediately or only after a delay? Overall, addressing these sorts of questions will help us better understand what types of video game experiences contribute to EF performance and its development and how these may be used to improve academic outcomes.
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