Event-related Potentials in a Secondary Auditory Task Fail to Distinguish High and Low Flow States in Video Game Performance

Flow is a state where individuals are fully focused on a task, know what to do and perform at full capacity. Despite this intense engagement, flow is not experienced as tiring; instead, it is intrinsically rewarding and promotes persistence. Only recently has the neuroscience of flow received empirical attention, and its neural bases remain unclear. Prior work by Núñez Castellar et al. (2019), found no behavioral or stimulus-locked differences in event-related potentials (ERPs) to a secondary auditory oddball task during flow while performing a video game, but they did report an increased latency in a response-locked ERP component, interpreted as the reallocation of attentional resources. Here we conducted a conceptual replication of their study using a more demanding video game (first-person shooter) and an improved flow manipulation. Thirty-nine participants played Unreal Tournament 2004 under two conditions designed to elicit high and low flow, while concurrently performing an auditory oddball task. Despite successful flow induction confirmed by subjective ratings, behavioral performance on the oddball task did not differ between conditions. Moreover, ERP recordings revealed no significant effects of flow condition on the stimulus-locked N1 or P3 components to the auditory task stimuli. Response-locked analyses also failed to replicate the previously reported latency shift in frontocentral negativity. Thus, the present results do not support the use of auditory oddball ERPs as robust neural markers of flow, particularly in multitask contexts involving high cognitive demands. We highlight two challenges for future work: (1) selecting tasks that reliably elicit flow without overloading participants, and (2) employing low-flow conditions that avoid disengagement, boredom, or excessive frustration. Carefully controlled designs contrasting flow with moderately frustrating states may provide clearer insight into the neural correlates of flow.