Compared with people who don’t play video games, individuals who engage in recreational gaming showed enhanced attention-related performance in cognitive tests, while those at risk of gaming disorders had reduced working memory, according to a study published this week in Computers in Human Behavior.Why It’s Relevant
It’s crucial for clinicians to understand the cognitive differences between recreational gamers and individuals with gaming disorders to help distinguish maladaptive patterns from healthy engagement, according to the researchers.
By the Numbers
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Researchers classified 114 participants (average age of 35 years, 64% male) into three groups (non-gamers, recreational gamers, and those at risk of gaming disorders) based on their responses to the Ten-Item Internet Gaming Disorder Test. The participants then completed seven computerized cognitive tasks.
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Compared with non-gamers, those at risk of gaming disorders performed worse on two tasks (Digit Span and Counting Span) designed to assess working memory capacity.
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Individuals in the gaming disorder risk group also had a higher number of incorrect responses compared with the recreational gamer group in the 1-back task, which assesses the ability to adapt to new information—suggesting more impulsive response tendencies.
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Recreational gamers showed enhanced response readiness and attentional control compared with non-gamers, as evidenced by their higher accuracy in the Go/No-Go task, which assesses inhibitory control.
The Other Side
Though the researchers used a reliable assessment to group the participants, the Ten-Item Internet Gaming Disorder Test is self-reported and doesn’t definitively determine if participants meet the clinical criteria for a gaming disorder.
What’s Next
These findings suggest that the cognitive benefits of video gaming may be present only in the context of non-problematic use. It’s also possible that problematic gaming may introduce other factors, such as sleep deprivation or stress, that could offset the benefits found in recreational gaming.
Related Info
Source
Krisztina Berta et al.: Game On or Gone Too Far? Executive Functioning and Implicit Sequence Learning in Problematic vs. Recreational Gamers. Computers in Human Behavior 2025 Dec 3. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2025.108878
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