Finding your way and playing video games

Yavuz and colleagues link playing video games and successfully navigating from one place and another. They “investigated the effect of video game experience and reliance on GPS on navigation ability using the mobile app Sea Hero Quest, which has been shown to predict real-world wayfinding performance. . . . [statistical analyses] found no significant association between reliance on GPS and wayfinding performance. There was a significant association between weekly hours of video gaming and wayfinding performance. . . . there was a significant association between hours of video game use and navigation performance, such that more hours of video gaming was associated with better navigation performance. . . . video game genre had no significant association with wayfinding ability.”
Emre Yavuz, Chuanxiuyue He, Christoffer Gahnstrom, Sarah Goodroe, Antoine Coutrot, Michael Hornberger, Mary Hegarty, and Hugo Spiers. 2024. “Video Gaming, But Not Reliance on GPS, Is Associated with Spatial Navigation Performance.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 96, 102296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102296