“Fall Guys”: The Impact of a Video Game on Convergent and Divergent Abilities

The study aims to estimate the impact of the video game "Fall Guys" on the convergent and divergent cognitive processes of players with different levels of gaming experience. Convergent processes assessed included short-term memory, selective attention, and mental inhibition. The indicator of divergent processes was verbal fluency. Among 203 surveyed students from the first year of psychology faculties, 147 later participated in the experimental study where 74 participants completed cognitive tests before and after playing the video game, while 73 participants completed tests before and after reading popular science texts printed on a paper blank. The gaming condition involved the popular arcade game "Fall Guys." The battery of cognitive tests included a short-term memory assessment, the Eriksen Flanker Task, the SART task, a short version of J. Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, the Guilford Unusual Uses Test, and the Deary-Liewald Task. A total of four sessions were completed based on the number of cognitive indicators. Participants with regular gaming experience showed higher scores in fluid intelligence, reaction speed, verbal fluency, and abilities related to selective attention and mental inhibition compared to non-players. However, short-term video game experience (compared to reading popular science texts) led to a decline in selective attention and mental inhibition but positively affected verbal creativity scores. Therefore, no positive short-term effect of video gaming on convergent processes was identified, though it was observed for verbal fluency scores. The significant differences in cognitive indicators between gamers and non-gamers allow for the discussion of these results in terms of the potential long-term effects of video games on both convergent and divergent processes.

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