Uncovering mechanisms in video game research: suggestions from the expert-performance approach

In the United States, video game playing is an immensely popular form of entertainment; the majority of adults will have had some experience with video games during their lives (Rideout et al., 2010). As the popularity of video games in entertainment has increased, so has interest in exploring the potential effects that video games may have on learning and generalizable cognitive ability. Educators have begun to seek a way to use video games as a tool to motivate students to learn academic skills (Blumberg, 2014). Despite general enthusiasm for video games as an avenue for training, there are shortcomings in the methodology commonly used to demonstrate the advantages of video game experience (See Boot et al., 2011; Kristjánsson, 2013). Additionally, few studies have sought to evaluate video game skill in the context of established research on skill acquisition in more traditional domains. This paper attempts to connect research on expertise with the claims being made in video game studies. Particularly, we discuss how the expertperformance approach can be used to describe video game performance and the mechanisms that are responsible for increases in skill as well as for potential transfer. We will also discuss how the design of traditional “casual” video games may be inconsistent with principles of skill acquisition through deliberate practice that has been documented in many other domains (Ericsson et al., 1993; Ericsson, 2006a).