Short-Term Touch-Screen Video Game Playing Improves the Inhibition Ability

There is mixed evidence regarding whether video games affect executive function. The inconsistent results in this area may have to do with researchers’ conceptualizations of executive function as a unified construct or as a set of independent skills. In the current study, 120 university students were randomly assigned to play a video game or to watch a screen record of the video game. They then completed a series of behavioral tasks to assess the shifting, updating and inhibiting subcomponents of executive function. Scores on these tasks were also used as indicators of a component-general latent variable. Results based on analysis of covariance showed that, as predicted, the inhibition subcomponent, but not the updating or the shifting subcomponent, was significantly enhanced after gaming. The component-general executive function was not enhanced after gaming once the results were controlled for other subcomponents. The results were unrelated to participants’ self-reported positive and negative affect. The findings add key evidence to the literature on executive function and potentially contribute to the therapeutic use of video games to maintain executive function in the aged population.