Blacker et al. (2014)

Who and when

Blacker et al. (2014)

Method

Laboratory experiment

Aim

To investigate the effect of videogames on the capacity of VWM

Participants

39 male undergraduate students (~20 years of age)

Procedure

• Participants were assigned to an action game group and a control group

• Both groups played their video game one hour per day for 30 days

• They were then tested on the VWM

Findings

People who played the action games significantly improved VWM capacity compared to the control.

Conclusion

Action video games can help improve the capacity of VWM over a long period of time.

Strengths

• High internal validity because of the experimental group and control group

• Quantitative data

Limitations

• Small sample size, hard to generalize to a broader population

• Only looked at short-term effects