**3.2. Personality and emotion**

130 Current Topics in Children's Learning and Cognition

**Figure 7.** Styles of coping with stress in video game players and non-players assessed with CISS

Video games have become a kind of appeasement genre. The games seem limitless in terms of technological progress which turns them into ever greater enjoyable experience for players. The popularity of games spurred research on their potential psychological effects. However, the influence of long-term repetitive video gaming on cognitive fitness is not full well clear. Our research above outlined demonstrates that spontaneous, uncontrolled video gaming activity, performed on a regular basis, increases cognitive fitness. Regular, avid video game players perform better on tests of episodic and visual working memory, decision making, perceptive processing, and conceptual and logical thinking than never-users of video games. Thus, game playing enhances mental agility in young adult players compared with that of non-players. These results are in accord with those of other studies which show the overall positive effects of heavy use of video games on attention, memory, and other executive-controlled brain functions (Boot et al., 2008,

That video game players' perceptual and cognitive skills extend far beyond those demonstrated by never-players seems to have a sound neurophysiological foundation. Research shows that neuronal networks used regularly for a given multitask set will be recruited to a fuller extent or alternative networks will come into play. There will be more flexibility in problem solving (Stern, 2002; Green & Bavelier, 2003). A habitual 'trained'

questionnaire (χ2=49.5, P<0.001; reproduced with permission from Borecki et al., 2011).

**3. Psychological agility of video game players** 

**3.1. Cognition** 

Maclin et al., 2011).

Our work demonstrates the presence of a specific game-related psychological pattern developed as a result of repetitive gaming sessions. The on-line games require an active interaction and cooperation with other players. This is congruous with the more outgoing, more approachable, and socially interactive personality trait of extroversion present in the players. Players are better emotionally equipped. They employ emotionally superior taskoriented strategy of coping with stress and are, in general, more emotionally stable. Gaming acquaints with a highly competitive, i.e., stressful circumstances. Such circumstances may actually help the players adapt to other real-life stressful situations and make them feel more secure and of higher self-esteem, which is reflected in taking on the more adaptive task-oriented strategy of coping with stress. The players would then be less vulnerable to stress in the longer-run.

Choosing a more adaptive style of coping with stress is in correspondence with disconfirmation of less-adaptive styles by video game players, as seen in our results. Unexpectedly, the emotion-oriented style of coping was up in this group. Possibly, there were persons among the players who were inherently predisposed to the feelings of anger or sadness. Such feelings may have been mitigated during the gaming sessions, but came to light between the sessions.

The overall advantageous psychological pattern in video game players may likely have to do with more efficient and less susceptible to disruption use of neuronal networks. Emotional stability would then go in harmony with enhanced cognitive functions due possibly to coordinated interaction of neurons in wider spread areas as a result of repetitive 'training' sessions (Uhlhaas & Singer, 2006).

## **3.3. Piagetian aspects**

Repetitive, training-like binding of perceptive signals in the context of previously acquired experience and knowledge while using video games fits well into Jean Piaget's cognitive theory known as 'cognitive constructivism'. The theory was originally created to understand the successive stages of intellectual development from the neonatal to childhood age (Piaget, 1977). On the premise, however, that cognitive development does not end at the age of physical maturity and rather represents a sort of continuum throughout the life cycle (Commons & Richards, 1984; Demetriou et al., 2010), we submit that the process of cognitive improvement in young adults due to video gaming may be seen extensional to this theory. One can find in the cognitive enhancement due to video gaming the basic tenets of Piaget's ideas. Games help classify or group subjects together on the basis of common features, which seems obvious in case of a battlefield or other action games. They help a person take new material into his mind from the fictitious fable and from the real environment

pertaining to the interaction with other players. Games thus play on the senses to make one's mind pliable to accommodate concepts and to adapt to changing situations. This adaptation also has to do with playing back on the memories of prior experiences, which should be fostered by improved memory processing in the game users shown in the present study. Furthermore, gaming facilitates the thinking process by trying to work things out in the head on the basis of the representation in the mind of the actions contained in the game. Enhanced conceptual thinking and logical reasoning in the gamers go hand in hand with the overall improved thinking process. The multitask games develop a mind frame for taking into account multiple aspects of a problem to solve it; a feature named decentering in the Piagetian classification of mental operations. Finally, games enhance the ability to shift away from one action to another, all of which takes place under pressure of time and interaction with other players, which forces out decisiveness in action, an additional element liable to drive cognitive enhancement. Put it in another way, the video game players are called upon using earlier learned abilities and upon performing concrete operations which they would not have undertaken otherwise, which brings to light the players' untapped cognitive potential. Video gaming enhances what, in general terms, is called psychological maturity.

Psychological Fitness in Young Adult Video Game Players 133

did not play games while surveyed. They did the psychometric tests once at the time free of gaming. Nor was the crucial issue tackled of whether the video games enhanced cognitive fitness concerning the specific mental tasks used in game training or the enhancement held true for other unrelated tasks. However, there is evidence from other studies that video games, particularly those exerting a high action-related and heterogeneous demand on mental functions, have a globally improving effect on one's cognition and psychological

The cause-and-effect relation is difficult to prove in the design of the presented work. It is possible that expert players fared better on the tests squarely because it takes better cognitive skills to be a good gamer in the first place. Thus, gamers would have had an inherent advantage over never-gamers when tested. However, both groups of subjects were fairly well matched regarding age, gender, educational status, etc. Although the matching obviously does not preclude inter-group differences having a genetic or environmental background, any such differences would seem random rather than systematic in view of a substantial number of subjects tested. There is no reason to assume the never-gamers are *a priori* inferior in cognitive or intellectual skills compared with gamers due to the sheer fact that they do not like playing the games. The major criterion of gamers selection was the long-term, for months, habitual use of video games. That criterion made it unworkable, for practical reasons, to carry out a longitudinal training study of the pre-post test type or tracing the cognitive gamers' history in their pre-habitual period. We purposefully chose a long-term habituation to gaming on the premise that it will enable us to bring out contrasts between gamers and never-gamers, which may not be the case in shorter time training protocols. Despite these limitations, we believe we have demonstrated that video gaming

This article describes the associations between playing the video games and psychological health. Commercial video games apparently offer an unintentional cognitive training, which makes them a psychomotor rehabilitation tool. Video games may supplement rehabilitative strategies in pathological conditions that affect adults, such as psychiatric and psychological disorders, including depression and neurodegenerative conditions in which cognitive performance and memory suffer or which may be accompanied by disordered thinking and decision-making (Gleichgerrcht et al., 2010). To this end, video games may also counter a natural cognitive decline of aging (Foos & Sarno, 1998). Future research should explore the best ratio of regularity, time and effort put into playing the games to achieve the maximum effectiveness of cognitive self-training. Finding the right proportions will enable the rehabilitators to advocate natural or prescribed use of video games for cognitive

Video games are often degraded to unwise activity and loss of time from the intellectual standpoint. We submit that negative attitudes toward the video games are not substantiated or are due to parental overreactions. Young persons should be motivated to start gaming

functioning (Frostling-Henningsson, 2009; Papastergiou, 2009).

enhances cognitive and emotional fitness in young adult players.

**4. Concluding remarks** 

enhancement.

## **3.4. Neural processing**

Contemporary neurophysiological research, unavailable at the time of Piaget, lends credence to the functional brain changes above outlined. Cognitive fitness has to do with coordinated synchronization of neural activity in different, often anatomically remote, brain areas. The better the temporal and spatial neuronal integration the better is the cognitive performance (for a review see Singer, 1999; Varela et al., 2001; Uhlhaas & Singer, 2006). Although neurophysiological data are discordant, for instance, attentional processing occurring with complex task training is ascribed alternately to lower frequency alpha (Maclin et al., 2011) or higher frequency beta range (Singer, 1999) in EEG recordings, the necessity for a large-scale synchronization of neural activity to accomplish the task is beyond a question. The multitask actions, typical for the video game, like the one presented in this article, require a parallel processing of multisensory inputs. Repetitive use of video games is thus bound to increase the attention and task-dependent correlates of cognition, such as conscious and purposeful stimulus selection and processing or operative memory. These processes, in turn, enhance 'cognitive reserve', the term coined for the ability to optimize performance of currently functioning neuronal substrate when coping with excessive task demands in healthy individuals or to recruit alternate 'reserve' substrate not normally used in case of diseased individuals with brain damage (Stern, 2002). The applicability of the notion of 'cognitive reserve' to video games' effects has practical implications, such as the game training might help brain impaired persons cope with the handicap.

## **3.5. Uncertainties**

Research on psychological role of video games is subject to frequent methodological flaws and the presented work is no exception. The participants were cross-sectional. The gamers did not play games while surveyed. They did the psychometric tests once at the time free of gaming. Nor was the crucial issue tackled of whether the video games enhanced cognitive fitness concerning the specific mental tasks used in game training or the enhancement held true for other unrelated tasks. However, there is evidence from other studies that video games, particularly those exerting a high action-related and heterogeneous demand on mental functions, have a globally improving effect on one's cognition and psychological functioning (Frostling-Henningsson, 2009; Papastergiou, 2009).

The cause-and-effect relation is difficult to prove in the design of the presented work. It is possible that expert players fared better on the tests squarely because it takes better cognitive skills to be a good gamer in the first place. Thus, gamers would have had an inherent advantage over never-gamers when tested. However, both groups of subjects were fairly well matched regarding age, gender, educational status, etc. Although the matching obviously does not preclude inter-group differences having a genetic or environmental background, any such differences would seem random rather than systematic in view of a substantial number of subjects tested. There is no reason to assume the never-gamers are *a priori* inferior in cognitive or intellectual skills compared with gamers due to the sheer fact that they do not like playing the games. The major criterion of gamers selection was the long-term, for months, habitual use of video games. That criterion made it unworkable, for practical reasons, to carry out a longitudinal training study of the pre-post test type or tracing the cognitive gamers' history in their pre-habitual period. We purposefully chose a long-term habituation to gaming on the premise that it will enable us to bring out contrasts between gamers and never-gamers, which may not be the case in shorter time training protocols. Despite these limitations, we believe we have demonstrated that video gaming enhances cognitive and emotional fitness in young adult players.
