[game_edu] NPR Story

[Susan Gold]

Video Games Boost Brain Power, Multitasking Skills
by MICHELLE TRUDEAU
December 20, 2010
Parents, the next time you fret that your child is wasting too much  
time playing video games, consider new research suggesting that video  
gaming may have real-world benefits for your child's developing brain.

Daphne Bavelier is professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the  
University of Rochester. She studies young people playing action video  
games. Having now conducted more than 20 studies on the topic,  
Bavelier says, "It turns out that action video games are far from  
mindless."

Her studies show that video gamers show improved skills in vision,  
attention and certain aspects of cognition. And these skills are not  
just gaming skills, but real-world skills. They perform better than  
non-gamers on certain tests of attention, speed, accuracy, vision and  
multitasking, says Bavelier.

Seeing Shades Of Gray

Vision, for example, is improved in gamers. Specifically, the kind of  
vision called "contrast sensitivity," that is, the ability to see  
subtle shades of gray.


"And this is a skill that comes in very handy if you're driving in  
fog," Bavelier says. "Seeing the car ahead of you is determined by  
your contrast sensitivity." Skilled gamers also are able to see  
smaller type size than non-gamers on vision tests.

But Bavelier wanted to know which came first: Is better vision caused  
by playing action video games, or is better vision a skill that gamers  
bring to the table? Perhaps, Bavelier wondered, gamers already have  
sharp vision, and are thus good at action games and vision tests.

To check this out, Bavelier recruited non-gamers and trained them for  
a few weeks to play action video games. "At the end of their  
training," Bavelier says, "they're told, go back home. No more gaming.  
They're not allowed to play any games."

Then they came back into the lab every few months to have their vision  
re-checked.

Bavelier found that their vision remained improved, even without  
further practice on action video games. "We looked at the effect of  
playing action games on this visual skill of contrast sensitivity, and  
we've seen effects that last up to two years."

Gamers, Bavelier has also found, have better attention than non-gamers  
— they stay focused. She gave gamers several tests to measure  
attention and found that gamers get less distracted by what came  
before and by events in their surroundings.

Laser Focus

They are able to detect, for example, new information coming at them  
faster. So as a result, they are more efficient. And Bavelier also  
says that gamers can switch from task to task much faster than non- 
gamers, making them better multitaskers.


"We see that typically in people that don't play action games, their  
reaction time [on tests of multitasking] lengthened by 200  
milliseconds, which is something like 30 percent," Bavelier says. "But  
in gamers, it lengthened only by 10 percent."

Closing The Gender Gap

Brain researcher Jay Pratt, professor of psychology at the University  
of Toronto, has studied the differences between men and women in their  
ability to mentally manipulate 3-D figures. This skill is called  
spatial cognition, and it's an essential mental skill for math and  
engineering. Typically, Pratt says, women test significantly worse  
than men on tests of spatial cognition.

But Pratt found in his studies that when women who'd had little gaming  
experience were trained on action video games, the gender difference  
nearly disappeared.

After 10 hours of training, Pratt brought the women back to the lab  
and gave them the spatial cognition test again.

"And we found that the women improved substantially, and almost caught  
up to the men's scores," he says.

Pratt also investigated another area of spatial cognition called "the  
useful field of view," which is essentially how much of the visual  
field a person can perceive at any given moment. In other words, as  
Pratt describes it, "How wide can you cast your net of attention?"

Typically, there are baseline differences between men and women on  
this test, with men performing significantly better. But Pratt found  
that training on action video games enabled women to significantly  
improve on this test of visual attention.

Pratt says playing these video games changes your ability to learn,  
and to find and integrate new information.

"Video game players are able to pick up very subtle, statistical  
irregularities in environments and use them to their advantage," Pratt  
says. "And these same irregularities in environments are the things  
that help us guide our behaviors on a daily basis."


Game Console Artists

To better understand how gamers acquire these non-gaming skills,  
neuroscientist Lauren Sergio, of York University in Toronto, looks  
inside the brain. She's found an important difference between gamers  
and non-gamers in how and where the brain processes information. She  
likens skilled gamers to musicians.

"If you look at professional piano players, professional musicians,  
you see this phenomena where they don't activate as much of their  
brain to do very complicated things with their hands that the rest of  
us need to do. And we found that the gamers did this as well."

Skilled gamers mainly use their frontal cortex, according to Sergio's  
fMRI studies. That's an area of the brain specialized for planning,  
attention and multitasking. Non-gamers, in contrast, predominately use  
an area called the parietal cortex, the part of the brain specializing  
in visual spatial functions.

"The non-gamers had to think a lot more and use a lot more of the  
workhorse parts of their brains for eye-hand coordination," Sergio  
says. "Whereas the gamers really didn't have to use that much brain at  
all, and they just used these higher cognitive centers to do it."

So the next time you despair that your child is immersed, yet again,  
in an action video game, remember: Gaming can improve some important  
skills.

Bavelier hopes that more action video games will be developed that  
train these skills without the violence found in the typical games  
available today. And all the researchers suggest that parents should  
limit their kids' time on video games. Moderation, they say, is the key.


-- 
Susan Gold
In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom!
- J. G. Ballard







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