Heavy duty video gamers have less focus

AMES, Iowa, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- High-volume action video game players -- those who play about 40 hours a week -- had more difficulty keeping focused on longer tasks, U.S. researchers say.

The study, published online in the journal Psychophysiology, also supports research published within the last year linking video game-playing addiction to attention deficit disorder.

Rob West, an associate professor of psychology Iowa State University, and Kira Bailey, psychology graduate student, recorded the electrical activity in the brains of 51 Iowa State undergraduate men ages 18-33 while they took completed an attention-measuring task.

The groups were nearly evenly divided between those who reported playing less than a couple of hours of video games per week and those who played video games an average of 43 hours per week.

The study found less proactive attention in those playing video games longer than those who played less than a couple of hours a week.

"We were not actually measuring the most extreme ends," West said in a statement. "There were people who we were unable to recruit and have data for who have higher rates than 43 hours per week. So this is probably on the high end, but it's certainly not the highest. You get some undergrads self-reporting that they're playing 9 or 10 hours a day."