[game_edu] NPR Story

[Gregory Walek]

https://www.npr.org/2010/12/20/132077565/video-games-boost-brain-power-m
ultitasking-skills

 

Here's the link to the story.

There is an audio clip of the story from Morning Edition.

 

-          Greg

 

From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On
Behalf Of Susan Gold
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 10:10 AM
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv
Subject: [game_edu] NPR Story

 


Video Games Boost Brain Power, Multitasking Skills


by MICHELLE TRUDEAU <http://www.npr.org/people/4569070/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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