Perceptual-motor Coordination during First Person Shooter Game Playing

Abstract

In this study, we propose a new method to investigate the perceptual-motor coordination during first person shooter (FPS) game play and the effect of FPS game experience on it. In an experiment, participants played the FPS game in which horizontally inverted images (inverted condition) or normal images (control condition) were presented. Repeatedly playing the FPS game in the inverted condition increased the game performance (e.g., game score), and in six trials, the performance reached plateau at the same level as that in the control condition. The analyses based on the FPS game experience showed that FPS players were able to learn new perceptual-motor coordination more quickly than non-FPS players. These results not only suggest that the method proposed is useful to investigate perceptual-motor coordination in FPS players, but also support the recent view that the advantage for videogame players is more evident with realistic stimuli and tasks than simplistic ones.