Slashdot Mirror
Video Games Found To Decrease Brain Activity
Richard C writes "A Japanese researcher, Akio Mori, from the Nihon University's College of Humanities and Sciences, claims to have found a link between the playing of video games and the balance of activity in the brain. It is also claimed that this effect can cause behavioural changes, such as lack of concentration, difficulty with social association, and short temper. These effects are also thought to be, to some extent, nonreversible." I was gonna say something witty and insightful here, but
I can't think of anything. At least I can't make a windows machine stable
enough to run Neverwinter or my brain would be toast.
Huh?
I've forgotten what I was going to say here, as playing Neverwinter has eroded my brain.
*drool*
doesn't decrease brain activity as much as watching tv, i'd bet.
And I guess this is true. I'd say a good amount of people play/played video games throughout their life, and I'm pretty sure they're not any dumber.
This comes off to me like the war on drugs: "Hey, people are enjoying themselves, we can't have that -- Get back to work"...
This doesn't bode well for professional game testers. They oughta get some kind of hazard pay for their weakening intellect.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
That is the Most insightful thing you have ever said!!
Haven't there been just as many studies showing the exact *opposite*? I guess it must mean that it does nothing at all in the end, since half of the reaearch shows one way, and half the other. I think it all depends on the agenda the researchs/financers start out to prove...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Does this mean I can sue Blizzard/Bioware/SSi?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
... might as well keep at it. I was taught never to do things half-way! Psychosis, here I come!
What happened to all that crap about hand eye coordination, and tomorrows kids will have such reflexes due to the constant training on flight sims and driving games. No really i'm not trying to be funny. I know many games that improve your prblem solving and managment (decision ) making skills.
all along my lack of concentration, difficulty with social association, and short temper have been a result of video games! I disagree. I can play a game like counter-strike for hours at a time and never lose concentration. I type to my opponents witty remarks like "that was bs!" all the time, and receive similarly witty replies - I've made some great virtual friends through gaming. Lastly, it takes at least 3 or 4 deaths for me to get pissed that some noob/hacker killed me. This may be funny, but it's true too!
that maybe the reason that it decreases brain activity is because the brain has gotten more efficient at doing tasks?
The first thing that I would like to know is which games were played? I would expect there to be a large difference in brain wave patterns between Pong and an RTS or Strategy game, which would require strategic thinking, game theory, and multitasking. Also, it seems as if the researcher may have had a negative attitude towards video games prior to the study.
"A good conspiracy is an unprovable one." -Conspiracy Theory
I've played a lot of strategy games in my life, the Civilization series, various SimCity games, Alpha Centauri, various RTS and war games. If anything, these games have made me MORE intelligent by finding different solutions to different problems. Fast-paced action games might suppress the thinking parts of the brain, so you can concentrate on not getting blown up, etc. That, and thinking too much causes hesitation, which causes death in the game.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Well, I guess I'll just go back to sitting on my front porch drinking 'shine, tokin weed and sniffin' paint.
Yes, I'm an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
i have spent more hours of my life playing doom and then civilization then i care to think about but... umm... what was i writing about?
why do i even talk to you people anyway! what's the point! stop bothering me dammit! GO AWAY!
umm... err...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"During childhood, playing outside with friends, not videogames, is the best option."
...then again, playing video games outside does sound intriguing... ;)
How dare he!
But seriously.. doesn't this deserve a big "Well, duh"?
The Free desktop that Just Works
Well hell I could have told you that. I play them to veg out, not deal with people, and enjoy loosing my temper at something I can take it out on. I also find that I become "SuperNeck" while I play, and the Uberness follows me into the hours after I stop playing. I was wondering why when I was running around with my grill lighter, with the flame at max screaming "MAHALITO!" people looked at me funny.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Ways to capitalize on this situation:
1) Sue Squaresoft / Nintendo / ID / Insert your favorite video game manufacturer here for the pain and suffering I experienced in high school for a lack of social skills (I didn't see no warning label)!
2) Sue any employer for refusing to hire me on the grounds on a lack of social skills. I can now call it a handicap.
3) Workers Comp!
reading this article really sent something of a chill up my spine. i have done nothing but play games since i was about 12, and some of those traits mentioned do apply to me.
causal fork? maybe. am i going to stop playing allied assault before i get out of that godd*mn exploding factory alive? not bloody likely.
go get it
I can say the only negative effects on me video games have caused are repetive stress aches in my thumbs. :(
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
The article talks about how this guy has found a "cause"; however, the researcher conducted a survey. That means he went out and asked a bunch of people: "How often do you play video games and for how long?" and then he checked their brainwaves and behavior. You don't get a causal conclusion out of that. The best you get is a correlation.
It would be more fair to say that he's found that people who play more games have less brain activity.
Who knows? Maybe the cause is the other way around: people with low brain activity play more video games?
20 console systems and 100 games... for 'research': $9000
3 years salary for 10 scientists: $1,800,000
Miscellaneou research costs: $400,000
Discovering that sitting in a lab all day playing video games just might result in social issues?
Priceless.
There are some things money can't buy... For everything else; there's research grants.
Puzzle games have long proved otherwise. Just ask anyone who's played Tetris, The Incredible Machine, or, for the kids, Math Munchers, Oregon Trail (Pretty much anything originally by MECC), and the Where the Fsck is Carmen Sandiego series.
:)
However, it's well known that video games can increase your physical activity, which in turn boosts your mental capacity, aptitude, and reaction time.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
So after playing video games, peoples brains don't need to work as hard?
They're just playing the wrong games. I have to use my brainpower and creativity to play my favorite game: KarmaQuest on Slashdot. If I just sit back don't think and post any microsoft rules old mpaa rocks crap lunix suxxx0rz, then I lose points.
On the other hand, if I spend some time and get creative and construct a witty, self-referential post that admits that it's there to whore karma, then I can win a lot of points.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
If they're continually playing games, then which period would that be?
Of course, here we see an article of undetermined scientific merit, based upon the research of an individual (with a specific agenda) that has yet to see even a basic peer review. Where have we seen that type of thing before?
Take it as you will.
Video games rot your brain, and bleaching hair causes brain damage. Since today's kids love both of these, they may be so out of it by age forty that they need to be put in nursing homes!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
After reading the article a couple of times trying to get past the poor Japanese->English translation I was left wondering if the actualt research makes any distinction between types of game. I would expect a game like Tetris would require very different brain activity from Quake, which in turn would be very different than that used to play EverQuest.
A category like "video games" is so broad it may be meaningless. It will be interesting to see what the research actually says, rather than the press release about it.
Sailing over the event horizon
my ADD.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Just found this story in the /. archive about a different Japanese research project stating that gaming stunts the brain.
-- Find the Truth...
At least I can't make a windows machine stable enough to run Neverwinter or my brain would be toast
Hey, Taco, get a Mac.
This is the second completely ludicrous science article I've read at this particular website in the last few weeks. It seems like they specialize in sensationalizing marginal psychological research results into weird moralistic conclusions. Cross reference this article about how fast food is turning japanese girls into sex maniacs:
p hs .html
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/0206/020619nym
Does anyone else remember the article on slashdot a few months ago that said video games actually stimulate the mind and promote problem solving? Seems we always end up going in circles...
These are EEG recordings. They placed scalp electrodes on the heads of these people while playing and not playing video games. The vast majority of these signals are close to 10 Hz, as was seen in the subjects.
The differences occur in the higher frequency range. These ranges are associated with strenuous attentional focus, and were highest in normals, near zero in heavy game players.
All this is restricted to prefrontal areas, which are the highest abstractest most creative planning areas.
WAY blown out of proportion.
Some background on brain waves from EEG
Also, this is being presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference, so it is quite possible VERY preliminary.
Despite what half of the comments here would like to argue against, the article makes NO negative claims about intelligence level. Rather they're claiming it effects the emotions of a person.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/08/153022 2&mode=nested&tid=159 ;-)
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
The only study that I will believe is one that make a positive correlation between playing video games and a decrease in one's ability to spell correctly.
This study would then be followed by one involving video games and grammar.
It is also claimed that this effect can cause behavioural changes, such as lack of concentration, difficulty with social association, and short temper.
Computer games are an exercise in stimulation, hence the lack of concentration when that stimulus is absent. This is very reminiscent of the "MTV generation" claims. I'll let the difficulty with social association when stuck in front of the computer for hours pass as self-evident. This leads to the short-temper. It can be caused by frustration in not getting your own way with immediate gratification (linked to first point). In real life, someone can't just type "stfu gayl0rd" to immediately close down a confrontation. They also can't evade or ignore confrontation in real life, which is easily done in a game. In fact it's not solely game related really. I've found I've become more short-tempered since I started working from home, as opposed to when I worked in an office. Mixing with other people is the only real cure. As for the non-reversible comment, I don't believe that. Anything you train yourself into you can retrain yourself out it.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
He divided the brain activity of participants into four categories -- naming the activity normal, visual, half-videogame, and videogame.
He probably should have made more groups such as violent videogames, strategy videogames, etc. No where in the article did I see any reference to analyzing the genre of videogame on the subject's brainwaves. It would be interesting to see how/if the brainwave patterns changed when playing Duke Nukem IV: Death To Everyone, WWF Smackdown Vol. 7: The Women, and Pikachu's Happy Hopscotch. If there was no difference, then perhaps the results really don't mean shit.
And the article never did say what was the "visual" group.
GMD
watch this
Exactly.
There are two many medical studies that draw direct conclusions from data when often the consistant occurrance of two effects together are caused by something completely different that the researcher never thought about.
For instance, people who drink one glass of wine a day have fewer heart attacks. But, maybe the real reason is that most of those wine drinkers they STUDIED make more money, take more vitamins, and generally watch their health better. Few doctors will mention that.
They also still don't know why EXACTLY Japanese women, before they move to America, have a lower rate of breast cancer than native Americans, and the descendants of those Japanese women also have a rate of breast cancer similar to other Americans (because they are native Americans at that point). Why? Because their Japanese? Because they eat more fish and less red meat than we do?
Also, with a controversial study like this, you always have to ask, "How many people DID you study and for how many years?". That important little fact seems to be absent from this article -- I've seen too many supposedly legitimate studies over the past 10-15 years that study 50 people over 2 years and call that "conclusive research" on humans. I hate to tell any scientists out there this, but accurate human research takes DECADES on a reasonable number of people (i.e. NOT 50).
When do scientists cross the line between science and tabloid news? I think more scientists need to learn...
So that's what's wrong with me! Quick, I need a lawyer. Who do I sue first?
The author of the article may have played one to many mortal combat sessions as well. Many important facts were just left out or ignored.
Every few months a go through a couple week addiction to a title from the Sierra Builing series, such as Acropolis. I believe this game actually increases intellect. How often does your mind have to balance 10 or so different conflicting priorities at once, such as entertainment needs, employeement problems, food supply, etc. Any need being address affects some of the others. Not only that, but you cannot directly affect anything (except tearing stuff down.) All actions you want to happen must be indirectly, and proactivly address. You cannot make food instanly out of thin air, you must built and employ people at forms to grow (or hunt) the food, staff a place to store it, staff stores which are located in strategic spots, etc.
This is not the same type of game for example as mortal combat type, or first person shooters. They have a completly different affect on the person playing them.
The author ignored, or failed to mention this whole issue.
-Pete
(amazon link above is an affiliate link...I love the game, I think other geeks may too.)
Soccer Goal Plans
I donno ... if you're one of those kids who regularly get the snot beaten out of them by the other kids, video games may lead to less tension and fear than playing outside.
Of course, at that point you develop friendships that don't involve playing outside. And thus the geek is born.
Finding God in a Dog
I highly disagree with this finding. My brain activity is greatly increased while playing games. It causes critical thinking on levels that you may not find out in the "real" world on certain occasions.
For example:
Strategy: when playing games like hitman, ghost recon, and other strategy based mission games - you really have to think about what it is your doing. Paying close attention to the environment around you and (in all the really well made games) the sounds around you. You have to think about the best way to go about a mission so as to hopefully complete it with a perfect score.
I like to play all my missions with a "one shot - one kill" mentality. I dont like to waste any more than one bullet to the head on my victims - and I like to have a 100% head-shot rating.
This type of thing can be found in certain fields; military, police etc... but joe computer nerd's only oppurtunity to experience this is usually in front of the machine. And some of us get really good about this kind of thinking...
Imagination: Many games lift your imagination and make you think of things - how you would like them - the way it could be etc... you dont get this as much with TV - when watching TV you just do that, sit and watch, and decompose. TV is not interactive no matter what marketing babble you hear... it is a totally passive activity.
Character development and forethought: When playing games where you are building a character over a period of time - MMORPG or NWN style game, you have to think about what type of character you want to become - and how to grow that character into that. That does not take "decreased brain activity".
and many other things - but its time for NWN so all my thought-cycles are being re-directed, so I'm outta here.
Isn't this why we play video games anyhow :)
...and later...
it was found that the longer people spent playing video games, the less activity they showed in the prefrontal region of their brains, which governs emotion and creativity.
I don't know about you, but I play games to escape. I use "emotion and creativity" in my everyday activity...generally the reason you want to escape is the "emotional" part...
Think about it..."I'm bored, I'll play a game"..."Wow, this new game is kewl, I've gotta play it" (read "this is much more interesting than my booring life")...Or even in some cases (GTA3, UT, Quake, etc) "I wanna kill something"
Most every game I play is either to "fix" an emotion (boredom, depression, etc) or to experience a "pleasurable" emotion (violence, acomplishment, etc)
brain activity in the people who continually played games did not recover in the periods when they weren't playing games
Beta wave activity in people in the videogame group, who spent between two and seven hours each day playing games, was constantly near zero even when they weren't playing, showing that they hardly used the prefrontal regions of their brains.
Yea, if you're spending 7 hours of your day doing *ANYTHING* it's gonna have a negative effect on you...it's the same reason noone wants a repetitive job.
Which makes me wonder, is this playing 1 game for 7 hours a day, or a variety of them over time???
One thing I wonder about is whether or not this is associated strictly with games, or merely using computers. I've noticed that I'm not as creative as I used to be since I've started programming for a living....
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I also wonder if there is some correlation between the intensity and/or longevity of the effects and age (I would expect that the effects are more pronounced and long-lasting in kids than adults, for instance).
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I wonder what type of games he had his subjects playing. It seems to me, from personal experience, that playing MMORPGs are(or at least can be) a little more interactive than playing single player games. For example, I used to play Ultima Online, and I played with a group of the same people pretty regularly. We used VOIP to communicate with each other while playing. It seems to me that something like this would have an effect on your brain waves because you're interacting with other people while playing the game. It would be interesting if someone did a study about the difference between MMORPGs and single player games with this in mind.
Just my two cents
it was found that the longer people spent playing video games, the less activity they showed in the prefrontal region of their brains, which governs emotion and creativity.
I'm confused about this. I would think that less activity in the sections of the brain that govern emotions would lead to apathy, not to a shorter temper or anger.
The only issue I take is with the decrease in creativity. There are several games (MUCKS/MUDS come to mind) that encourage creativity in the form of building or roleplay. If you're not creative, there is no way you can pretend to be something that you're not.
Jumping around a bit more... the quote states that the decrease in activity was most readily seen in people that game a lot. I ask you this... wouldn't reading do the same thing to you? If came home and read all day, it would most likely affect your social skills and decrease your overall creativity as well.
Prolonged time playing video games could cause people to lose concentration, get angry easily and have trouble associating with others, a Japanese professor's research has suggested.
My own research has proven the following startling possibilities:
Crossing the street could result in immediate violent death.
Flying in a plane could result in impacting the ground at extremely high speeds, thereby resulting in death.
Followers of any religion could develop more fanatical views and act out in anti-social ways.
All life on Earth could be wiped out by a large meteor impact that we shall discover 3 days after impact.
Oh, and of course, sitting around all day watching TV or playing games could rot your brain. I think that research has been done before, but its good to keep bringing it up. Parents need to keep abreast of this research so they have an excuse to get their kids off the computer when they otherwise won't listen to anything the parents say.
How was this research conducted? What was the initial purpose of the reasearch to begin with? Did they set out to prove (or disprove) the results they ended up with? So you set out to prove that iodine is bad for rats. Take 100 10 ounce rats and inject them with 5 ounces of iodine each. 99 rats die, and one escapes prior to injection. From this, you can prove that iodine could be fatal to rats. You can prove that large doses of iodone are not fatal to rats in some circumstances (the rat escapes). And in the end, we've learned nothing.
Research causes cancer in rats. Move along. Move along
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Yeah, except that in this case the study design included a within-subjects experimental manipulation. People's gaming activity levels were compared against their non-gaming activity levels, so they served as their own controls. Gaming lowered the brain activity of everyone except those who never play games.
Also, with a controversial study like this, you always have to ask, "How many people DID you study and for how many years?". That important little fact seems to be absent from this article
240 people. It's right there in the 4th paragraph of the article.
Do you play a lot of videogames?
I'd be interested to see if there's a difference not just between gamers and non-gamers, but between people who play video games and other types of games. Does a pencil-and-paper RPG like AD&D have the same effect as a computer RPG like Neverwinter Nights? How does a "twitch" game like a first-person shooter compare to a real-life game that requires fast reflexes, such as ping pong? What about chess, or crossword puzzles, or Scrabble?
The main question that this study leaves unanswered is the cause of these effects. Is it the content of the games? Or is there something special, from a neurological standpoint, about playing games on a TV or computer screen as opposed to in real life?
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
The biggest problem with this study is that people were not selected randomly into each group. Because of this some of the measured effect maby coming from the fact that same people game more than others for a reason. It may be that a brain that reacts in a sertain way get's more pleasure from gaming then others. (This could be compared to those studies that "proved" that living together before marrige causes increased risk of divorce.) Note that i don't claim that the conclusions of the study are wrong, just that the mechanism of choosing how a person ends up in what group can effect the results. And i don't see any method of preventing such bias in the study.
FRA: STFU GTFO
It should make a hell of a difference. Specially if those other players can be get to known. I think meeting people face to face is much better than any online multiplayer RPG, but it will make a hell of a diference.
unfinished: (adj.)
Seems like the causation in this study is going the wrong direction-- difficulty with social association et al would tend to make one more likely to want to play video games, where those attributes aren't a detriment. Video games require 0 social association, they don't care if you yell and scream at them and generally make an ass of yourself (unless you actually break the game, of course), and you don't have to concentrate on anything outside the screen.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Perhaps this has to do with what is getting optimized. If he is studying games that place a premium on fast reaction times, then it makes perfect sense that extraneous computations would tend to be filtered out as players became more trained to the mind set required by the game. Conversely, they might become more acutely aware of certain sensory stimulii.
Learning to perform any activity causes the thought processes to optimise themselves to perform that activity. This seems obvious. I would hardly expect game playing to be any different. Games of strategy would probably not exhibit this effect, but also would not encourage quick reactions. etc.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There are tons more articles like this on MDN. It's their specialty.
My other first post is car post.
Unless he read a different article than he submitted, the submitter made a bit of the summary up. Specifically, he said that "these effects are also thought to be, to some extent, nonreversible."
The only time the article references that is when it states:
And brain activity in the people who continually played games did not recover in the periods when they weren't playing games, the research showed.
I didn't see evidence of a test in which they deprived the gaming group of games for a couple months, and then tested them. That being said, it's obvious that getting daily exercise has all sorts of benefits, with or without the study.
Certain types of video games definitely are used for the "veg out" factor. I'd be interested to see a study comparing people who play 2-7 hours of games a day (he DID pick a pretty hard core group) to people who watch 2-7 hours of TV a day.
I'm running great with Win2K on my dual Celeron box with 192 MB RAM, SB128 audio and Abit GF4 Ti4200 video. I was surprised to hear people were having so much trouble.
Guess what else lowers attention spans, alters thought patterns, and makes it harder to do such things as interact and study: music!
Ever tried to study to music? Unless the music is raw noise that you just tune out, chances are that you partly listen to it -- wasting precious mind cycles. If you are listening to particularly good music, which you stop to enjoy (or even jump up and dance to, depending on the situation, etc), you're clearly not focusing on the task at hand.
Humans don't multitask at a fundamental level (not well, anyways). This is why study guides say you shouldn't study to music, and that you should study in blocks of time greater than half an hour for full effect (your mind does take time to switch gears).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The phrase "the prefrontal region of their brains, which governs emotion and creativity," is a little misleading. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is poorly understood, but one could just as accurately write that it governs problem solving and decision making, or that it governs voluntary eye movements and short-term memory.
There is certainly some evidence that activity in the PFC can go down with practice, but it's not exactly a rock solid reliable effect (perhaps a no-brainer?), and I don't think when it's been observed it's been associated with creativity, whatever that is.
dan
Who would dare a call master chess player anything but a genius? Indeed, few "video games" require such in depth and coordinated multidimensional thinking, but certainly some do. Take Master of Orion (1,2, & soon 3), Civilization, Warcraft, Sim City, and Railroad Tycoon. Although not chess, they hone skills of perception, opportunism, cause and effect, and forethought that would otherwise have no stimuli in our oh-so-great non-video game world. ;)
How about a double blind study to compare these findings to office workers, tv watchers, etc.?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I mean, if someone is a couch potatoe all day and all night only to eat, excrete and sleep, wouldn't it have the same effect?
Maybe even reading, surfing the web or anything else for that matter. I think it's easier to prove with games since they generally require more interaction and tend to keep our interest.
All I can think of are the final fantasy series games (and other squaresoft games). I'm a real nut and I've been playing them since they came out in the U.S.
I did well until I got to FF7. I had grown up a bit and went about halfway through only to get mad at myself for waisting so much time on a "stupid game" even though the game is awesome.
I did the same thing with FF8. I'm even working on FF9 right now. I'd guess I'm about 75% done with Disc 3 out of 4. I'm too enthralled with this game since it incorporates a lot of cool stuff from the older games (FF1) that I grew up with.
I have no intention of starting FFX or beyond.
Anyway, the point is this... When I play those games for hours and hours and hours, I get mad at myself because I have passed on social oppourtunities and I have been lazy and realize that I should have been doing work or sleeping instead of staying up until 6am trying to get my FF5 guys up to Level 99. (THANK GOODNESS THEY CAP IT OFF AT 99!!!!)
Just due to the lack of sleep alone, I probably kill some brain cells.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
This seems to be another case where there may be a strong correlation but debatable causation. If you have bad social skills you are far more likely to engage in introverted hobies, included amongst those is playing video games.
Also, I'd be very curious to see a study showing the relation between different kinds of games and brain activity. Does playing a stategic game alter the effects versus a shoot 'em up kind of game. Seems to me that a puzzle solving game is probably going to have a different effect than say pac man.
Finally, I'm curious as to what his conclusions are actually saying. I'm not a neurologist so I can't comment with any real expertise, but I've done a little research about brain waves, mental states, etc. I had always been under the impression that having a brain heavily in alpha waves was good. This is, as I understand it, the state one is supposed to be in when meditating. So is this necessarily a bad thing?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
As for the alleged correlation, effects of loss of prefrontal function, i.e. loss of creativity and emotional functionality. . . shouldn't this show up in game programmers first as a decline in programming skills and in increasingly bizarre behavior? When I say 'bizarre', I mean of the sort that gets people arrested or committed.
I suspect something is going on here, but I doubt it means what the researcher thinks. Or the results he was paid to 'discover'.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Last time I checked, pretty much every Japanese like to play games. Weird enough, I have yet to meet a dumb Japanese.
> Do you play a lot of videogames?
No, I don't; but I hearily agree with the parent that 68.5% of medical and social "science" research that relies on externally invalid statistics is absolute and utter crap 95% of the time.
83% of people know that 9 times out of 10.
Surveys can find just about anything you want, if done correctly.
"Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true."
c-hack.com |
I take gingko biloba... I'd forgotten the reason.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
In other news, results from a new study were released today that show that smoking is found to lower IQs.
2) Get laid. Get so good at it that you can walk into any social situation and walk out with someone you just met.
3) Find a person who perfectly compliments your own strengths and faults, marry them, create a strong and lasting marriage, have kids, and raise them to be excellent people.
These should probably not be attempted simultaneously
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Fucking ROCKED!
Wizardry II on my Apple II. Balls to the wall 64K (yup, I had the 16K Language Card) machine running 1.4 MHz. That took more of my hours (and according to this study my health) than any other game out there today.. except ZORK of course. I think it might have been written in Pascal..
Anyway it was great. Wonder if it will run on catakig emulator? Zork's great.
...I thought that it was just my ass getting numb.
I would! While some master chess players are no doubt geniusess, others are probably not. An idiot savant may be an excellent chess-player, but still not a genius.
Being good at chess requires some very specific abilities that overlap, but do not encompass, "genius."
Although not chess, they hone skills of perception, opportunism, cause and effect, and forethought that would otherwise have no stimuli in our oh-so-great non-video game world.
What "perception skill" can be experienced in Civ. that has no stimulus in the real world? The ability to perceive icons? You can do that all the time in the real world.
God is real unless declared integer
(Which is of course to say that it was a great pun. The best puns IMHO are the worst ones)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Honestly though, of all these kids spent their time reading and persuing intellectual activity and making friends instead of sitting in front of a computer / TV, just think where the world would be.
I've noticed that the tone of the posts questioning the validity of this study sound a lot like a creationist decrying evolution. In my mind the correlation is too strong to be co-incidental, and reduced brain activity because of videogames is a scary enough thought to warrant consideration.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Mori said the research showed that only the nerve circuits of sight and motion moved when people played videogames, causing a drop in the process of thought.
Hunh? Where are they going? It seems to me that if playing video games keep my
nerve circuits in place I should be playing more of them.
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/0206/020619nymphs .html
Sorry, you are mistaken. The Mainichi is a great major Japanese newspaper, unfortunately its English version has stopped appearing in printed form due to furious competition.
The Wai-Wai section which this latest sex maniac article has always been a full page section which compiled a precis of several bizarre and interesting (half of the time sex-related) articles from the weekly tabloid magazines. The word tabloid is also perhaps not appropriate; these magazines include news, essays, and a titilating slant but are not like U.S. supermarket tabloids' "Space Aliens Had My Baby" genre. Generally the articles seem not to be apocryphal, and most always good for a laugh or squeamish grimace. I recommend WaiWai (which means something like "Yeah!" or "Fun!" or "Surf's Up!" which shows another side of Japan which you might call wacky, perverse, sociologically fascinating or just "realistic", this is what Crighton never told.
I used to buy the newspaper just for this column (Sundays I believe) and a couple of columns inside the front page. A great loss right down to the cheap ink that would come off on your fingers. Thanks for finding it online for me again!
Find a set of randomly picked non-computer-games-players and throw the same set of challenges at them. See which kind of people are better at handling those problems. (getting (2) and (3) to be compatible with each other seem to be particularly difficult...)
WaiWai is pretty much a tabloid. It doesn't seem to be quite as prone to pure fabrication as the usual American staples, but it's close enough.
---
Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
Remember a few years ago before FMVs became so popular in video games? Research showed that video games IMPROVED learning, now, ahh;
:-D
just like a night out at the movies.
Enjoy your latest wanna-be RPG on your PS2, feh.
Betcha if somebody did a study of Nethack players they would NOT find the same results.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
If the test subjects in the article play anywhere from two to seven hours a day of video games, then either they are on the payroll of the research full time and this is legitimate, or they are holding regular jobs and NOT GETTING ANY SLEEP.
C W-Quake-Doom binge and pulled out with a fresh brain? Yeah, right. No one is getting any stupider because of the internet, video games, or television. Perhaps, AND I AM JUST GOING OUT ON A LIMB HERE, maybe there is a correlation between sleep deprivation and decreased Beta wave activity.
I mean, honestly, how many of us have spent waaaaay too many hours blowing out our REM sleep time and come to work fresh and ready to go?
Seven hours a day! How many of us have not gone on a C&C/Warcraft-Starcraft/Counterstrike/Evercrack/RT
Using an EEG to make statements about the effects of gaming on the brain is like trying to benchmark your computer's processing power with a voltmeter. Likewise, using self-selecting experimental groups is poor science. If this researcher was at all serious about proving a causal relationship between gaming and negative effects on the brain, why didn't he:
1) Select a random sample consisting only of healthy people who don't play games for more than X hours a week to participate in the study.
2) Randomly divide that sample into a control group (who don't modify their behavior) and several experimental groups. Take measurements of brain activity for all participants before any of them play games. Use standardized psychological tests and health history questionnaires to rule out participants who are abnormal psychologically or physiologically.
3) Choose an archetypal set of games representative of different game categories (puzzle, shoot-'em-up, etc.)
4) Administer no games to the control group, games from a single archetype to individual experimental groups, and a mixture of games from different archetypes to one of the experimental groups. Give each experimental group an equal amount of time playing games.
5) Take measurements of the control group at rest. Take measurements of the experimental groups prior to gaming, while they are gaming, and after gaming.
6) Use a better system of measurement than surveys and EEG. Neurofunctional MRI and standardized psychological tests would work nicely.
?
The military must have been aware of this effect for some time. The use of video-game style simulators has greatly increased the percentage of soldiers who are willing to unthinkingly shoot to kill when under threat. In WWII, it was less than 50% in the most recent conflicts over 90%. I've heard military trainers say that videogame programmers are doing the job for them. They are making military training much easier as young recruits join the military without emotional "baggage" about killing.
r0ck 0n!!!!!
...and that's how you get stuff like 'Eating oat bran *MAY* prevent cancer!' on your Cheerios box.
Stated more succinctly: correlation does not imply causality.
The non-rigorous*** empirical "sciences" (basically everything except Physics and sometimes Chemistry and occasionally Biology) are notorious for:
1) confusing correlation with causality
2) failing to implement proper experimental control groups
3) releasing results to general public without proper peer review
4) releasing results to general public before results are independently confirmed
5) Fitting N data points on a plot with an N-1 degree polynomial ("Hey, look! My thesis is perfect! The data matches the curve EXACTLY!!! Hello, Ph.D.!")
6) Am I missing anything?
It's like these people never actually studied the scientific method when they got their degrees! What I've come to realize is that there are groups of people who are more interested in the weight the scientific method carries (toward advancing their goals) than in using the scientific method to uncover facts.
One of my pet peeves is when your some dude in a TV show says "There has to be some kind of scientific explanation for this!"
Wrong.
"Explanations" aren't "scientific" -- "Methods" are.
Anyone who publishes results like this without describing their experimental methods and techniques - especially when they claim to have uncovered a causal relationship - deserves to be ignored. His conclusions might ultimately be right, but he's not doing science.
*** NOTE: "Non-rigorous" means "no underlying mathematical theory required" -- think Psychology, Sociology, etc...
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
So you're waiting for the Linux client too?
:).
Wonder if you've joined the chorus of Penguins over on nwn.bioware.com asking for it
Brain activity...Maybe that explains why I like to sleep so mu...zzzzz
StarTux
Look at the parallels! I do it for more than seven hours a day, five days a week, and I come home crabby and hating human beings. Quick! Somebody publish a paper!
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The major problem I see with this is not demonstrating whether the video game playing is the cause or a symptom of the lack of concentration and social difficulties those in the study have. It seems just as or more likely that the people who were in the category that played the most may have always had social difficulty, lack of concentration and irritability (and these three conditions seem to exacerbate the others) and use video game playing as an escape or coping mechanism. It may be true that prolonged playing may worsen these conditions but it may also help people deal with them. This is particularly true with on-line games as people that are self-concious seem more comfortable socializing virtually for a multitude of reasons.
STOP ROCK VIDEO
First off. . .
The group studied 240 people in three groups. -Heavy game players, moderate and abstainers. That puts 80 people into each group. Among that 80, were people aged from 6 to 29. --Right there, I'm concerned. Different aged people have different things going on with their brain chemistry. Puberty alone introduces all kinds of chemical changes which could throw off the study. What was the gender division? Were all the participants playing the same game? Were the particpants using a CRT or a thin-screen? (different levels of EM and different kinds of visual stimulus affect the nervous system in different ways.) Heck, the various occupations of the participants could easily make a difference;
For instance, how many of the participants work 8 hours a day in front of a VDT, and how does that affect the study?
A study like this, which sounds to me as though it applied virtually no environmental controls on its subjects, would have to use a MUCH larger sample of people before any statistical analysis could become properly convincing. 3000 people would be a good number, with sub-groups where such things as age, gender, and type of occupation are taken into account.
Now, granted, this article was light on details, and maybe the study was done with strict controls and measures, but until the actual paper is released this Fall, we won't know. Until then, based on the posted article, I am going to have to suspend judgement, because it seems to me that this study might easily have been poorly executed.
That being said, however. . .
Just because the science may have been poor, I would not be surprised in the least to see that there IS some kind of correlation between video game playing and altered mind states. It would be very interesting if somebody were to do a proper study to find out what the effects might really be.
Until then, I am. . .
-Fantastic Lad
At least I can't make a windows machine stable enough to run Neverwinter or my brain would be toast.
Apparently its already too late if you can't make a windows machine thats stable enough to run a simple game.. oh well..
(2) and (3) are perfectly compatible. What use is finding Miss/Mr. Right if she/he won't even talk to you. Being good at relationships requires lots of practice. Being good at sex requires lots of practice. Starting successful companies requires lots of practice.
The idea here is finding an optimal solution, not merely finding the same mediocre solution that the average person would find. We are all placed into our lives with a certain set of resources. But everyone's goal is the same: to maximize our success by the end of the game (life). You can define success in any way you want. You can play randomly, or you can have some strategy.
Life is the ultimate real-time strategy game.
My other first post is car post.
I guess all of us computer game fans already knew this. But the question wasn't that. The problem that was presented was: who is better enabled to handle such problems, computer game players or people who don't play computer games?
I think people who don't play computer games aren't able to handle any problems that stray from a closely defined set.
To see why, look at slashdot trolls. When you start working/playing with computers, you start to accept answers that stray further away from what you were conditioned to accept as valid. You become more adept at exploring new situations.
In other words, you become more intelligent.
It claims that video games can cause behavioural changes, such as lack of concentration [failing to read even the short article introduction on Slashdot], difficulty with social association [not getting any], and short temper [arguing non-objectively and in a personally attached manner as is common on Slashdot] . These effects are also thought to be, to some extent, nonreversible [continuing to not get any for the rest of your life]. It does not state that you are an idiot because you play video games.
Best Slashdot comment ever
I've quickly scanned the responses, and nobody seems to have mentioned this (or if they did, nobody modded them up):
/. readers, I'd guess will have at some point gone to bed after a few hours playing Tetris, Minesweeper, or even those pen and paper grid based Logic Problems, and found themselves dreaming of grids or falling pieces. This in an example of your brain being rewired with new skills -- which depending on the game, may or may not be valuable skills in the real world.
The article doesn't mention what games they tested.
I'm sure most of us have played certain games to the extent that you feel your brain has been rewired: most
A recent (reprehensible IMHO) UK TV program ran an IQ test, a large chunk of which was to do with reasoning about rotating shapes. Playing a lot of Tetris has to be training for questions like that.
I've made kids play Solitaire in order to develop mouse coordination.
LucasArts point'n'click-ers train the mind in warped comedy logic
Quake trains the mind in lightning reactions and terrain-based strategy
Rhythm-action games train the mind in keeping to a beat (potentially useful to the budding drummer!)
etc.
The article is worthless unless it tells us what sort of game it's claiming to be harmful.
The Mainichi 'WaiWai" news site (http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp) is a clearinghouse of news stories from the Japanese dailies - the equivalent to a 'news' site in the USA that collected the most significant news stories from the Star, the Enquirer, etc. Take it for what it's worth, and go read about "Eager beavers diving into old pornos for new tricks" or this excerpt from "TV products put to bizzzzare uses!": '"I bought two vibrating diet belts. Of course I bought them to lose weight, but I realized that if I strapped them over my private parts, it felt unbelievably good. Recently, I've forgotten all about my diet," a 37-year-old woman says. "Instead of attaching the belt horizontally, I stick it on vertically, between my legs. Then I check out all the young guys at work and think about all the nasty things I'd like to do with them." '
OK, WSJ online it's not.
-Styopa
One mentioned right here.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Thanks for the heads up on that one ... I saw it somewhere on a cooling/overclocking board a while back. I just thought it was funny.
since the researcher had to play the video games he was reviewing, and thus fell under their EVIL INFLUENCE (TM) and had his brain reduced to mush before writing up his results.
I was playing Q3A last night and there were brains flying EVERYWHERE!!
Me lose brain!? Uh oh!
l os e_brain.wav
http://members.tripod.com/~MacOp/simpsounds/Me_
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning