Think about how important it is for gamers to distinguish sounds in the game. Sounds give us a lot of information about what’s going on: they notify us about the approach of the enemy, his location and actions. They help us navigate the situation and give us feedback (oh that juicy “ding” when you hit your head). So designers make it easier for us to work with the interface, reduce the number of pointers on the screen. In competitive games the sound is so important that some players even change the voiceover language to get an advantage: in Overwatch, for example, they change it to Korean, because some lines are made clearer there. But what happens – if games require us to distinguish sounds accurately, are we superior in hearing to ordinary people?
FUSION RANGE
In 2010, scientists from Duke University (USA) partially answered this question. They were interested in a special phenomenon of perception – the so-called fusion range. I’ll try to explain in a simpler way. Think of how you type on a keyboard. It seems to you that pressing a key and a letter appear on the screen at the same time. In fact, it is not: the pressing and the appearing may be a millisecond apart, but your brain still perceives them as a single event. This is the fusion range. It’s easy to track the moment when your brain stops seeing the events as simultaneous: your computer starts to slow down and the letters on the screen appear with a slightly longer delay. You instantly have a feeling of discomfort – up to the point that it becomes impossible to type. Of course, this is just an example: the fusion range exists for all stimuli – visual images, sounds, bodily sensations.
STUDY
American scientists were interested in whether fusion ranges differ between gamers and people without gaming experience: roughly speaking, how easily do gamers identify stimuli as non-simultaneous compared to normal people? To answer this question, the researchers asked the study participants to solve two problems.
- First, people were seated in front of a monitor and wearing headphones. At a certain moment a square appeared on the screen, and a short signal sounded in the headphones. This was repeated over and over again: The difference was the delay between the appearance of the square and the signal. Sometimes they appeared simultaneously, and sometimes with a delay of 10 ms, 50 ms, 200 ms, and so on. The task of the participants was to say each time whether the stimuli were simultaneous or not. In science, the normal range of fusion for audio-visual stimuli and humans is thought to be between 0 and 150 ms: that is, at this delay, normal people consider the appearance of two stimuli as a single event. At a delay of 200 ms or more, people in 50% of cases already say that the stimuli appeared at different times. So, scientists from the U.S. suggested that players will be more accurate in guessing when there was a delay between stimuli and when there was not.
- The second task was similar to the first, only sometimes the square appeared slightly earlier than the signal and sometimes later. Participants had to guess which stimulus went first. Here, too, the scientists hypothesized that gamers would be more accurate in guessing the sequence of stimuli.
Forty-five male participants took part in the experiment (because female gamers could not be found). Men with gaming experience were sent to one group and men without gaming experience were sent to another group. The gamer group consisted of people who had played first-person shooters for at least 2 hours per week over the past 6 months + had played sports and strategy games for at least 4.5 hours per week in the same time frame.
RESULTS
As the researchers expected, gamers did better at both tasks. Players guessed with great accuracy when there was a delay between stimuli. Not even the smallest deviation from physical equality (0 ms delays) escaped their perception. For people with no gaming experience, the range of comparisons corresponded to the norm – the stimuli seemed to be simultaneous up to a delay of 150-200 ms.
Gamers were also better at guessing which stimulus preceded the other. Non-gamers tended to always call the appearance of the square first: this is because the visual stimulus is brighter, has an interesting shape, and captures attention. But the players showed no such bias. This once again confirmed that gamers are able to better distribute attention.
The results of the study suggest that gamers have a more accurate perception – including sound. It is a big step towards the recognition that video games are useful not only for the eyes, but also for hearing. However, as the authors themselves say, it is impossible to say with certainty that video games develop sensitivity. The data obtained can also be explained by the fact that initially sensitive people are drawn to the game hobby – because it is easier for them to win. In order to confidently conclude about the benefits of video games, it is necessary to conduct a training experiment: to train people with no gaming experience in video games and see if their perception will improve.