GLS Conference

Games have long been associated with the rhetoric of learning, progress and growth, but meaningful empirical demonstration has remained somewhat elusive (Sutton-Smith, 1992). Empirical studies do demonstrate specific cognitive benefits of playing games, such as an improved ability to track moving objects on screen (Green & Bavelier, 2006, 2007) but such findings, although important for understanding basic perceptual systems or even hand-eye coordination, do not address our more pressing concerns such as the aging brain, emotional wellness, self-regulation, or even stress. Cognitive training, or so called “brain games,” are often designed toward these more pressing outcomes, although their actual benefits remain hotly debated. Research in the area reports various increases in cognitive performance as a result of game play (Gates et al, 2020; Hardy et al., 2015), but critics observe that some of the game titles used are little more than cognitive test prep, producing increases not in meaningful, transferable skills but only in routinized and narrowly defined laboratory tasks (Max Planck Institute and the Stanford Center on Longevity, 2014).

In this presentation, we present a critical and systematic review of research on the cognitive and emotional benefits of casual games across the lifespan. We summarize the trends, results, contradictions, and ambiguities across 317 published research articles, chapters, and manuscripts with a median publication year of 2017. Here, we review findings related to cognition, neural change, social and emotional health, and tackle some of the conceptual and methodological issues germane to the study of casual games more broadly.