Game experience leads to improvement in cognitive functioning of the early middle-aged adults in contrast with the young-aged adults

Cognitive functioning is essential for living a life, in particular, to aged adults. As cognitive deteriorations begin already in the early stage of middle-aged people, it is crucial to prevent those cognitive deteriorations in advance. This study was designed to investigate the potential effect of game on cognitive enhancements interacting with participants’ age. We recruited the young- and early middle-aged participants having game experience or no game experience to compare the game effect according to age. Cognitive abilities of the experimental groups were measured with Spatialmemory Span Task (SST), Attentional Network Task (ANT), Tower of London Task (TOL), and Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). There were no signficant different performancs in the young-aged game and non-game groups, while the early middleaged group showed superior performance in TOL compared to the early middle-aged non-game group. It indicates that the game effect on cognitive abilities was modulated by age and depended on types of cognitive functioning. Several reasons were addressed for explanation of cognitive enhancement of the early middle-aged group in TOL. Consequently, this study suggests the possible use of the game to maintain and develop our cognitive functioning, especially for aged adults. •The cognitive advantages of the game are modulated by age and cognitive functioning.•The game has benefited only in early middle-aged group relative to young-aged adults.•Improvement of problem solving ability was observed in the early middle-aged group.•Any cognitive improvement was not shown in the young-aged group.