The human brain is malleable, it
learns and adapts. Numerous research studies have focused on the impact of
action video games on the brain by measuring cognitive abilities, such as
perception, attention and reaction time. An international team of
psychologists, led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, has
assembled data from the last fifteen years to quantify how action video games
impact cognition. The present study focuses on one specific video game genre,
action video (war or shooter) games that have long been considered as
mind-numbing and how they influence the cognitive skills of players. A total of
8,970 individuals between the ages of 6 and 40, including action gamers and
non-gamers, took a number of psychometric tests in studies conducted by
laboratories across the world with the aim of evaluating their cognitive
abilities. The assessments included spatial attention (e.g. quickly detecting a
dog in a herd of animals) as well as assessing their skills at managing
multiple tasks simultaneously and changing their plans according to
pre-determined rules. It was found that the cognition of gamers was better by
one-half of a standard deviation compared to non-gamers.
The psychologists proceeded to
analyze intervention studies as part of the second meta-analysis. 2,883 people
(men and women) who played for a maximum of one hour a week were first tested
for their cognitive abilities and then randomly divided into two groups: one
played action games (war or shooter games), the other played control games
(SIMS, Puzzle, Tetris). Both groups played for at least 8 hours over a week and
up to 50 hours over 12 weeks. At the end of the training, participants
underwent cognitive testing to measure any changes in their cognitive
abilities. The results were beyond dispute: individuals playing action videos
increased their cognition more than those playing the control games with the
difference in cognitive abilities between these two training groups being of
one-third of a standard deviation. Despite the good news for avid gamers, it is
worth highlighting that these beneficial effects were observed in studies that
asked individuals to space their game play out over a period of many weeks to
months rather than to engage in a large amount of gaming in a single sitting.
As is true in any learning activity, short bouts of repeated practice is much
preferred over binging.
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