The gorilla in the room: The impacts of video-game play on visual attention

•We compared video game play and inattention blindness.•Demographics had no significant effect.•Action-video game play improved the detection of visual stimuli.•Hours of video game play had no significant effect.

Early studies of visual attention noted a phenomenon termed ‘inattention blindness’ – the inability of participants to see clear stimuli enter the visual field when attending to something else in that field – and sought to expand the understanding of the phenomenon (Neisser and Becklen, 1975, Simons and Chabris, 1999 and Stoffregen et al., 1993). Other research has focused on the changes to the human brain and cognitive functions as a result of video game play, both in positive and negative contexts (Howard-Jones, Ott, van Leeuwen, and De Smedt (2010)). This quasi-experimental study sought to corroborate some of the findings that tie together these seemingly disparate lines of research, adapting the methodology of the most cited inattention blindness experiment (Simons & Chabris, 1999).