Do video game players have superior visual attention skills? Researchers at Griffin Univer...

Do video game players have superior visual attention skills? Researchers at Griffin University (Australia) conducted a study to determine whether video game players have superior visual attention skills compared to non–video game players ( Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis , Vol. 6, 2009). Two groups of male psychology students—32 video game players (VGP group) and 28 nonplayers (NVGP group)—were subjected to a series of visual attention tasks that included the attentional blink test. A test for the difference between two means yielded t = -.93 and p-value = .358 . Consequently, the researchers reported that “no statistically significant differences in the mean test performances of the two groups were found.” Summary statistics for the comparison are provided in the table. Do you agree with the researchers conclusion?

Based on Murphy, K., and Spencer, A. “Playing video games does not make for better visual attention skills.” Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis , Vol. 6, No. 1, 2007.