Can half an hour of play change a child’s attention?

Video games are part of the everyday lives of many children and are frequently the subject of debate among parents, educators and researchers. While some studies suggest benefits for certain cognitive abilities, others raise concerns about possible effects on attention and learning. But what cognitive changes can occur immediately after a play session? A recent study sought to address this question by examining the effects of a brief period of gameplay on attention and executive control in preschool children.

Led by Andrea Facoetti and Sara Bertoni, the study involved 48 typically developing children with a mean age of 5.4 years. Each participant was assessed under three different conditions: a control condition without play, a 30-minute session of an age-appropriate action video game (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe), and a 30-minute session of a traditional construction-based game (Tangram). Following each condition, the children completed tasks assessing attention, speech-sound processing, visual perception and motor coordination.

The findings showed that video games and traditional games produced remarkably similar immediate effects. After playing, children performed better on tasks requiring the rapid detection of relevant stimuli. For example, they showed greater accuracy in discriminating speech sounds and responded more quickly when identifying visual targets presented without distracting elements. These results suggest that engaging play experiences may temporarily strengthen more automatic attentional processes, directing attention towards information that stands out in the environment.

However, the same pattern was not observed when tasks required greater executive control. When children had to ignore visual distractions or continuously adjust their motor responses based on previous performance, their performance declined following the play sessions. Moreover, these effects became more pronounced as task complexity increased. Interestingly, similar effects were observed after both the video game and the traditional game, suggesting that the key factor may not be the technology itself, but rather the level of psychological engagement and attentional activation generated by play.

The authors suggest that a brief play session may temporarily reorganise the allocation of children’s cognitive resources, favouring attentional processes directed towards salient stimuli at the expense of more demanding executive control mechanisms. From an educational perspective, the results indicate that the period immediately following an intense play activity may be less suitable for tasks that require sustained concentration, self-control or resistance to distraction. Conversely, it may represent an opportunity for activities that benefit from rapid responding, active exploration of the environment or efficient detection of relevant information. Rather than supporting either a positive or a negative view of video games, the study shows that different forms of play (digital and non-digital alike) can temporarily influence how children allocate their attention, an insight that may be relevant for parents, educators and policymakers when designing learning environments.

This study is part of project 153/24 – Psychophysiological Activation and Learning (to Learn): Evidence from Action-Like Video Games to Mindfulness, supported by the Bial Foundation, and was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior Reports in the article Brief Digital and Traditional Gameplay Transiently Reallocate Attentional Resources in Preschool Children.

ABSTRACT

Video game play represents one of the most engaging forms of computer-mediated activity in early childhood, yet its immediate cognitive effects remain insufficiently understood. The present single-blind randomized crossover study investigated whether a brief play session transiently alters attentional allocation and executive control in typically developing preschool children. Forty-eight children engaged in an action-like video game, a traditional puzzle board game, or a no-play control condition. Performance was assessed across auditory-phonological, visuospatial, and sensorimotor domains using tasks indexing stimulus-driven processing and executive control. Across domains, both game conditions selectively enhanced performance in tasks primarily relying on rapid, stimulus-driven processing, including phonemic awareness and visual target detection without distractors. In contrast, performance declined as executive demands increased, as reflected by reduced efficiency under high interference load, slight reductions in phonological short-term memory, and less stable sensorimotor aiming. These transient effects emerged immediately after play and did not differ substantially between digital and non-digital conditions. The findings suggest that brief, emotionally engaging play experiences - whether digital or non-digital - may temporarily prioritize bottom-up attentional processes over effortful executive regulation in preschool children. Rather than indicating purely beneficial or detrimental effects, these results highlight dynamic, context-dependent shifts in cognitive resource allocation following gameplay. Understanding such short-term multisensory and sensorimotor modulation is essential for informing the integration of digital play into early childhood learning environments.