Learning and Transfer: A Perspective From Action Video Game Play

A growing body of research documents the positive impact that action video game play has on a range of cognitive skills. Such a result, in which training on one task promotes a broad variety of benefits, is a rarity in the cognitive training domain. Instead, the more typical result is that training on one task promotes benefits on that task alone with only limited transfer to untrained tasks. We have proposed that action video game play promotes broad generalization by first enhancing attentional control abilities. This in turn allows for more information to be accrued as one experiences a new task and thus faster learning of that new task. Possible theoretical and practical considerations of such a view are discussed.