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Study: Playing Computer Games Makes Kids Smarter
Nightspore writes: "The Sunday Times is running this article on the results of a study by the Economic and Social research Council (ESRC). The study found that, 'people who play games regularly seem to develop a mental state that we have seen before only in serious athletes or professionals such as astronauts, whose life depends on concentration and co-ordination ... Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people ... They had more friends, were better adjusted and tended to read more.'" Hey it's just a study, but it's amusing.
So perhaps gettings smarter makes people more violent.
I certainly feel more inclined to kill people the more I learn about them.
Bryce did her research by visiting computer gamers, often during regional or national competitions around Britain
The population of interest is computer gamers but the sample is taken from those gamers who go to competitions. Therefore the sample is not random and one ought not make conclusions about all gamers based on gamers who go to competitions.
A recent study by the Home Office indicated that those who regularly played computer games when young were more likely to go to university and get a better-than-average job
Someone already mentioned correlation != causation, but I'll elaborate. Television sets are much cheaper than computers and internet access; also, university attendance is very much correlated to income. I don't have survey data to back this up, but it seems that income ought to have been considered to make sure that it's not a lurking variable. (affects both variables but is unseen)
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Hey, what about D&D? That helped me get a head start on my math way back when. I hated to add and multiply. D&D game mechanics gave me a better head for numbers.
The only thing video games did was drive my ambition to hack warez that I downloaded and squeeze every last bit of juice out of that crappy old OS (DOS).
We all know it though.
A specific real-world example (my own experience):
I played, and I still do, a *lot* of Civilization as a young lad. I later on read the works of Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince, The Discourses).
The truly scary thing is that I kept thinking of Civilization the entire time and the information made a lot more sense to me after playing all of those hours. (my conservative estimate: 3 or 4 months worth, but I hauled that number out of my ass)
I had a better understanding of his works simply because of my experience in that game and what's more, my strategies in said game have changed, so that I am a much better player because of it.
Of course, reading all of that has ruined me in that I now tend to write really long sentences, though I haven't yet achieved the one feat that I have only seen from Machiavelli and Dave Barry, which is, of course, the 1.5 page sentence, in which the author creates an extraordinarily long sentence, containing much information, all the while being grammatically correct, and conveying one basic idea in a surprisingly clear manner, such that the reader, after having read it, actually goes back to see where said sentence began, and reads it again, just to make sure that the sentence is, indeed, that long.
In other news... looking at porn helps relationships, because it helps with hand/umm... coordination, and gets people more in tune with their bodies.
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I 've hit the Zone in Q3:A... That place where everything is reflex, where no one on the map can even touch you. You win games by 30 or 40 frags over the second place person and barely get touched. You breeze through crowds of enemies leaving only a fine mist of blood in your wake... Then 3 hours later you finally snap out of it drenched in sweat, heart pounding, on a massive adrenaline high. It's just like running a marathon or competing in an all day martial arts tournament. It's great!
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
All I needed to know about sex I learned from Leisure Suit Larry. Who says games aren't educational?
Despite the fact that they are rare, you do not see the media giving tons of coverage to every person struck by lightning. People by now realize that even though being struck by lightning is rare, there is nothing spectacular about it. So the media doesn't cover it. If only the media would get over shark attacks. Sheesh. In any case, many people play video games, and many of them have different reasons for doing so: hobby, relaxation, obsession... Which type of person a media outlet chooses to cover as representing "gaming" tells more about the media outlet than it does about gamers themselves. Thankfully this article was mostly positive. Maybe I won't feel so sheepish about admitting to other adults that I play video games.
But if everyone plays video games except you, then you'll be the maladjusted one.
You: "Hello, good sir. How are you this fine day?"
hax0r1: "whatx0r?"
hax0r2: "what j00 say!?"
hax0r1: "I will own j00000!!!"
You: "Um... excuse me. Do you speak English?"
hax0r3: "Let's g0. This l00z3r doesn't speak 1337."
A couple quotes from the article that disprove this hypothesis:
"Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people."
"Bryce did her research by visiting computer gamers, often during regional or national competitions around Britain"
What her research proves is that gamers who are talented enough to play at "national competitions" have better hand-eye coordination, reflexes, and quicker responses. Duh, I already knew that. She should study me -- I play games constantly. And I lose. Badly.
Rather than studying people who excel at gaming she should have studied people before and after they took up gaming. The unorthodox and obviously biased means in which this study was carried out suggests the author was only fishing for a catchy headline.
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Or do smart people play more games? Things like computer games and athletics develop ability to concentrate for longer periods. But, this development could just be the result of a long attention span wanting to be worked on. The brain is like a muscle, it wants to be worked out to become stronger.
I'm not going to draw any conclusions about this study without thinking more.
However, it has been my own anecdotal evidence that computer game playing, while improving hand-eye coordination and strategic thinking, does severly limit normal social interaction.
Modern computer games train gamers to work within the systems of chat rooms, message boards, and other online forms of communication. When the gamer is in a classical social situation (dinner party, traditional work meeting, academic classroom, etc), the result that I have noticed is that the gamer is:
1) Less social. That is, less likely to interact with other people because, for lack of a better phrase, the other people "just don't understand."
2) Think less critically about the situation. They become uninterested in anything that doesn't relate to current games or to the prospect of new games.
3) Have poor verbal skills. Nearly all computer games operate without a verbal component. The verbal skills of the gamer atrophies.
I am concerned that we are developing a culture, that is growing, of people who are less than ready to live up to their full potential.
This is just my concern. This is just based on anecdotal evidence. I accept the fact I may be totally off base.
...they just maim a lot of people's feet.
If you see games as a tool to teach people to persevere, overcome and work hard then yes, cheat codes are a negative thing.
However, if you see games as something to have fun experiencing then cheats are generally a good thing. They're a tool to skip frustrating, badly-balanced areas of a game and get to the fun stuff; a player who's really enjoying a game generally won't resort to cheating.
Now, all kids have to do is look up the cheat codes for God mode, and get after it with a BFG
Are you really bemoaning the fact that today's lazy kids don't work as hard at playing games?
Now, all kids have to do is look up the cheat codes for God mode, and get after it with a BFG.
Click here or here.