Action video games may help attention more than other video games do.

The review

1. 01

   Who took part

   22 studies of young adults aged 18 to 35 took part. The paper says most of these studies had about 13 to 45 people.

2. 02

   What they did

   Young adults typically played action video games, such as shooter games, for about 23 hours. The other group played other kinds of commercial video games for a matched amount of time.

3. 03

   What happened

   Attention and spatial skills improved more after action games, but perception, multitasking and language did not clearly. Studies with small or no results seem to be missing, so the gain is probably smaller. One lab's studies, run by a review author, found much bigger gains, and the paper's sizes disagree.

What the review found

1. Helped

   Across 13 studies, playing action games helped attention more than other games did.

   Pooled analysis of 13 studies · vs people who played other video games · ⚠ signs that small negative studies went unpublished

Source