This study investigated the relationship between the degree of involvement with video games of 72 male university students with performance on pilot screening tests of psychomotor abilities, perceptual abilities, and cognitive style, and also with several personological variables, school performance, locus of control, sociability, and social presence. Additionally, the effects of experience with a video game on the learning of perceptual and psychomotor skills was examined for different levels of previous computer game involvement. It was found that those students who began playing at earlier ages and who more recently played the most demonstrated increased psychomotor abilities, and those abilities appeared to be enhanced by video game play. Greater amounts of time per week spent with computer games were found to correlate with increased facility in learning perceptual skills on computerized instrumentation, and with relative underachievement in school. No systematic relationship was found between degree of video game involvement and measures of sociability, social presence, and field dependence-independence. The study concluded that computer games may have effects upon those individuals who play them, but the effects may not be as negative as many people believe.

Cognitive-attentional test anxiety theory posits that test-anxious individuals direct attention internally, thus interfering with task-relevant information processing. Nevertheless, working-memory deficits are often obscured by compensatory exertion of increased effort by anxious subjects on cognitive tasks. Failure to identify anxietyspecific performance decrements has led some authors to replace the test anxiety construct with one emphasizing skill deficiencies. This investigation examined whether information-processing deficits are inherent sequelae of test anxiety or merely reflect lowered exam-taking ability in test-anxious persons.