"It's like how pilots train in a flight simulator," said Raymond Mar, an associate professor of psychology at York University, in Toronto, who has collaborated with Oatley.

In a similar study, Oshin Vartanian of Toronto University asked volunteers to compare original paintings with ones which he had altered by moving objects around within the frame.

When Jonathan Freedman, a social psychologist at the University of Toronto, reviewed the literature, he found only 200 or so studies of television-watching and aggression.