Researchers found video games boost visual attention, but reduce impulse control.
A person playing a first-person shooter video game, such as Halo or Unreal Tournament, must make decisions quickly. Researchers found that the fast-paced decision-making boosts the player's visual skills but comes at a cost, reducing their ability to inhibit impulsive behaviour.
The reduction in what is called "proactive executive control" appears to be yet another way that violent video games can increase aggressive behaviour, according to the researchers.
Doctor Craig Anderson, director of the Centre for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University in the United States, said: "We believe that any game that requires the same type of rapid responding as in most first-person shooters may produce similar effects on proactive executive control, regardless of violent content.
There is a growing body of research that links violent video games, and to a certain extent total screen time, to attention-related problems and aggression.
Dr Anderson said people's ability to override aggressive impulses is dependent in large part on good executive control capacity.
Social psychologists are looking how a variety of factors - including media exposure, anger, and alcohol - affect that capability.
Dr Anderson explained that two types of cognitive control processes play a large role: proactive and reactive.
He said: "Proactive cognitive control involves keeping information active in short-term memory for use in later judgments, a kind of task preparation. Reactive control is more of a just-in-time type of decision resolution."
In three new, unpublished studies, Dr Anderson and his colleagues found that playing action video games is associated with better visuo-spatial attention skills, but also with reduced proactive cognitive control.
