Yes, that is a possible alternative explanation. And the “fight-or-flight” response also releases lots of adrenaline, which complicates things further.
I’ve done some thinking about how I would test this hypothesis.
A disclaimer before I begin, I don’t actually intend to run any of these experiments.
First I think its necessary to simplify the game mechanics: instead of players trying to hit a target, they should just shoot as soon as they see the target on their screen, because for this hypothesis we are only concerned with how long it takes to recognize the enemy. Aiming at a target can take a variable amount of time, depending on how far they have to rotate their gun, the mechanical limitations of human hands, and also whether they are aiming for the enemies head (small target) or center of mass (larger target). The variability in how long players take to aim makes analyzing it difficult.
Experiment 1: Player in control
The purpose of this experiment is to verify that the attackers advantage really exists.
Methods: play the game and record a video of it. Then analyze the video: for each encounter determine if the player is attacking or defending, and measure the reaction time between first visual sight of the enemy and the first gunshot. Do a statistical analysis: determine the p-value likelihood that the two scenarios (attacking & defending) are actually different distributions (rather than random samples of the same distribution), and also plot a histogram of the data to get a sense of the magnitude and reliability of the attackers advantage.
Experiment 2: Player observing
The purpose of this experiment is to verify that the attackers advantage is caused by the players ability to control their own movement.
Methods: the player will watch a video recording of themselves playing the game, and when they see an enemy they will click their mouse as though to fire the first shot. Then a piece of custom software will record the exact time of the click so that I can determine their reaction time. I hypothesis that a statistical analysis will show the following:
| Attacking | Defending
-------------+-----------+----------
Controlling | fast | slow
Observing | slow | slow
Where all of the scenarios marked slow are equally slow.
Methodological Considerations
The player has already seen the video which is shown to them in the observing scenario, which is an unfair advantage over the in-control scenario. Mitigate this by having the player wait a long time (days to weeks) between recording a video and observing that particular video.
Player performance can vary greatly between and within a gaming session. Mitigations:
- Have multiple sessions for each experiment.
- Record and control for time of day.
- Interleave game rounds of controlling & observing, so that time-based variations in performance are represented in both data sets.
Experiment 3: Obtain an EEG headset kit
The purpose of this experiment would be to replicate the prior two experiments, but this time also measure and analyze the players brainwaves.
- show that brainwaves correlate with both visual perception and motor actions.
- show that sensory input which arrives in the middle of a brainwave is not perceived until the next brainwave.
- show the silencing of brainwaves in anticipation of an event, and that the subsequent brainwave is precisely timed to the event.