Video game experience and optimized executive control skills—On false positives and false negatives: Reply to Boot and Simons (2012)

a r t i c l e i n f o In this reply, we respond to methodological points raised by Boot and Simons (2012) to a paper on video game experience and optimization of executive control processes (Strobach, Frensch, & Schubert, 2012). In sum, we assume that differences in strategies to recruit expert game players and novices cannot explain performance differences in cognitive tasks between both groups of participants as a sole account. Further, in contrast to Tetris training, exclusive effects after training with an action game on complex task situations including two different tasks certainly do not result from differences in the levels of motivation between both training types during the transfer tests. Finally, a lack of retest effects from pre-to post-test during transfer may result from relatively short durations of these tests. We discuss these points in conjunction with a perspective for balancing false positive and false negative errors in training research. The present reply is a response to Boot and Simons (2012), who wrote a commentary on Strobach, Frensch, and Schubert (2012). Boot and Simons aimed at a clarification of their methodological guidelines for performing valid video game training and expert studies (Boot, Blakely, & Simons, 2011). In the present article, we first respond to four critical points that were raised by these authors about how their guidelines were realized and interpreted in the study by Strobach et al. Subsequently, we propose a further guideline aimed at ensuring the best possible efficiency of training studies without losing scientific validity by balancing the false positive and false negative errors in training research. In their first point, Boot and Simons (2012) argue that differences in the overt strategy to recruit video game experts and novices could contribute to measured differences between both groups of participants performing cognitive tasks (Strobach et al., 2012, Experiment 1). That is, if " participants know that they are being recruited because they are expert action gamers, they might be motivated to perform well on cognitive tasks " (p. 2). Although we generally do not argue against this statement, we assume that differences in recruitment strategies cannot explain expert/novice differences in task performance as a sole account. So far to our knowledge, there has been no empirical evidence for such a motivational effect in video game literature. We assume that for such an effect to occur, prior knowledge of a relation between gaming expertise …