Synthesizing from Corbett and Munneke (2025), who demonstrated that questions originating in human-computer interaction (HCI) and game design can be answered through the theoretical toolkit of cognitive science, this perspective argues that commercial videogames represent a largely underutilized research environment at the intersection of these two fields. Cognitive science has long relied on carefully controlled laboratory paradigms to study perception, attention, and executive functioning, raising persistent questions about ecological validity. HCI, by contrast, has spent decades developing methods for studying behavior in rich, complex, interactive environments, but has been less concerned with what that behavior reveals about underlying cognitive mechanisms. Commercial videogames sit precisely at this intersection. They are cognitively demanding by design, motivating by nature, and consistent enough across players to support systematic behavioral comparison. The affordance structure of a game does the work that experimental manipulations typically require of the researcher, instantiating cognitive demands that are genuine, sustained, and meaningful to the player. We argue that perception, attention, and executive functioning can be meaningfully studied within commercial games using a minimal observational toolkit of screen recording, eye tracking, and behavioral timing. We propose an affordance-cognition mapping framework as a systematic basis for game selection and research design and offer practical methodological recommendations for researchers wishing to work in this space.

翻译：基于Corbett与Munneke（2025）的研究——他们证明了源自人机交互（HCI）与游戏设计的问题可通过认知科学的理论工具包得到解答——本文认为商业电子游戏是这两个领域交叉处一个尚未被充分开发的研究环境。认知科学长期依赖严格控制的实验室范式来研究感知、注意与执行功能，其生态效度始终存疑。相比之下，人机交互领域数十年来已发展出研究丰富、复杂、交互环境中行为的方法，却较少关注这些行为如何揭示潜在的认知机制。商业电子游戏恰恰处于这一交叉点：它们通过设计实现认知挑战，具有天然激励性，且在玩家间保持足够一致性以支持系统性行为比较。游戏的可供性结构实现了通常需要研究者操作的实验控制，实例化了真实、持续且对玩家具有意义的认知需求。我们认为，借助屏幕录制、眼动追踪与行为计时等最小化观测工具包，可在商业游戏中有效研究感知、注意与执行功能。我们提出可供性-认知映射框架作为游戏选择与研究设计的系统性基础，并为希望在此领域开展研究的人员提供实用的方法论建议。