Rhythmic patterns of behavior in a fast video game

What is it about?

We show that people use different strategies when playing fast vs. slow video games. At slow speeds, people can plan and consciously control each keypress action based on sensory features of the environment. At fast speeds, on the other hand, people need to rely more on automatic motor strategies to cope with the time pressure of the environment: this results in increased rhythmicity in motor behavior. In addition, we show that skilled players are able to use their hands independently, whereas less skilled players aren't able to do so and have to tie actions from one hand to actions from the other hand.

Featured Image

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This paper provides evidence for two different cognitive and motor mechanisms, which we modeled computationally. One next step would be to determine the underlying brain structures that are responsible for such mechanisms. Overall, this research helps us better understand human behavior in complex task environments such as video games, and tie that to cognitive and neural systems.

Perspectives