TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pohl, Carsten
A1  - Kunde, Wilfried
A1  - Ganz, Thomas
A1  - Conzelmann, Annette
A1  - Pauli, Paul
A1  - Kiesel, Andrea
T1  - Gaming to see: action video gaming is associated with enhanced processing of masked stimuli
N2  - Recent research revealed that action video game players outperform non-players in a wide range of attentional, perceptual and cognitive tasks. Here we tested if expertise in action video games is related to differences regarding the potential of shortly presented stimuli to bias behavior. In a response priming paradigm, participants classified four animal pictures functioning as targets as being smaller or larger than a reference frame. Before each target, one of the same four animal pictures was presented as a masked prime to influence participants' responses in a congruent or incongruent way. Masked primes induced congruence effects, that is, faster responses for congruent compared to incongruent conditions, indicating processing of hardly visible primes. Results also suggested that action video game players showed a larger congruence effect than non-players for 20 ms primes, whereas there was no group difference for 60 ms primes. In addition, there was a tendency for action video game players to detect masked primes for some prime durations better than non-players. Thus, action video game expertise may be accompanied by faster and more efficient processing of shortly presented visual stimuli.
KW  - video gaming masked stimuli
KW  - masked priming
KW  - action videogaming
KW  - unconscious processing
KW  - prime visibility
KW  - expertise
Y1  - 2014
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-112681
ER  -