Enhanced Cognitive States (ECSs) have been operationalized as dramatic transient enhancements in temporal and visual-spatial aspects of attention, accompanied by the state of parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) withdrawal-associated arousal. Previous research has shown that ECSs can be elicited during “adrenaline-rush” FPS (first-person shooter) games involving highly adventurous features (e.g., shooters, survival, horror, fantasy). In Experiment 1, we examined the role of a player’s perspective in reaching the ECSs, by comparing the changes in the performance on the focused attention task and electrocardiographic (EKG) data of expert video gamers who played, on two different days, first-person and third-person adventurous video games (Unreal Tournament and Metal Slug, respectively). In Experiment 2, a group of expert video gamers who played an FPS game for 30 minutes and exhibited significant increases in the temporal aspects of attention, reflecting the ECSs,  was examined on the tasks, measuring conflict resolution and verbal working memory. The results suggest that the first-person perspective is critical for accessing the ECSs, as the players experienced the ECSs only during the Unreal Tournament but not Metal Slug. Furthermore, participants in ECSs improved significantly on conflict resolution but not verbal working memory, suggesting significant enhancements of executive attention during the ECSs, but not necessarily domain-specific capacities. The project results suggest possibilities for consciously accessing latent resources of our brain to temporarily boost our cognitive capacities on demand (e.g., providing military personnel with video-game training before short-burst missions).

Keywords
DIGITAL-GAME-BASED-LEARNING,ENHANCING PERFORMANCE,HUMAN PERFORMANCE

Additional Keywords
enhanced cognitive states, gaming, focused attention