Slashdot Mirror
Video Games Boost Visual Skills
cmburns69 writes "A new study published in Nature Magazine (MSNBC summary) suggests that playing action games improves visual skills. Among other things, young adults who played action games such as Grand Theft Auto and Medal of Honor regularly could track up to five objects at a time - 30% more than non-players. Apparently, the game type is important, as ten hours of the block-rotating game Tetris failed to improve test scores."
I've been playing video games my entire life, and yet I've had 5 automobile accidents, countless number of knife mishaps and I am probably up for "most likely to be on 'America's Funniest Home Videos'".
so we all know what this means, I need to play even MORE video games, or less Grand Theft Auto.
Mike
wow, its true. all those years of saying it to my parents, not believeing it myself. and its true. craziness. surely a sign of the apocalypse. p.s. first post!
If someone would've told my mother that video games helped improve visual skills, I probably would've gotten a nintendo when I was 5, instead of having to live with that TI-99/4A computer...instead, I learned to program in BASIC...
--- I'm just rambling...
I knew Virtual Valerie had to be good for me.
Several friends of mine credit their above average vocabularies and problem solving abilities to RPGs among other games. There's a reason why most nerdy smart people play video games!
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
And Mom always said Video Games would kill all of my brain cells!
suck1ng y0u n00b, y0u n33d m4d CS sk1llz t0 b3 l1k3 n30...
(CAUTION: preceding is sarcasm; post-disclaimer for the retarded)
But everybody was cheating so it didn't matter anyway.
... is that people who can't track that many objects at once are turned off by games and don't play them. The article doesn't say whether they tried to account for this factor or not.
What next, a diet of Doritos and Mt. Dew make you a stud?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I always held the belief that hand-eye coordination was vastly improved through video gaming.
I am over here... now I am back over here!
So let me get this straight, it took a study to realize that playing games where you have to track the movements on screen, while paying attention to what you're doing, will help you to track objects in real life? Isn't this like saying that playing video card games will help you get better at real life card games?
Makes sense to me.
Grand Theft Auto: "Shat! That cop's gonna catch me! I gotta pay attention!"
Medal of Honor: "Shat! That nazi's gonna catch me! I gotta pay attention!"
Tetris: "Shat! That block's gonna... fall... somewhere... Ehn, no big loss."
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
What else improves hand-eye coordination and tracking skills? Playing catch outside, perhaps?
Huh? What's that? Tracking 5 objects at once, you say?
Er, nevermind...
masturbating 3 times a day got rid of my carpal tunnel...
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
...playing Tetris hasn't helped my test scores any!
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
...test subjects forced to play ten straight hours of Tetris exhibited twelve times the rate of violent activity seen in the control group.
University of Rochester would like to thank the following sponsors of the study: Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Rockstar Games and Electronic Art.
(Please make check payable to Thomas H. Jackson, President, University of Rochester.)
as ten hours of the block-rotating game Tetris
Only ten hours? I remember when I had a DOS version of Tetris... it sucked up all the free time I had. I never really got any homework, so a look at my elementary report card wouldn't be a good measure of my abilities.
When you don't have a leg to stand on, don't even get up.
I play CS nearly nonstop, and I still have horrid vision. I use my ears in CS more than anything though. Did they try testing that...?
What factors do you think hearing may play in action games like CS that require you to listen to footsteps to anticipate your opponents. If this data is true, then shouldn't my hearing be inproved as well...? I find that I can now hear footsteps in the game and tell how many people are running, how close they are to me, and other important game data.
Games rock afterall...
-kalle
10 hours of Tetris!!!! In a Row. I know my brain would be jelly after that.
I've been working on improving my hand eye coordination(it has many advantages beyond gaming). This probably sounds stupid, but i've been slowly increasing the gamespeed on Unreal Tournament. Once my stats go back up to what was my average level on 100% gamespeed i bump it up a few more percentages. I'm in the 150%s now, its crazy fast, but not as hard as you'd think.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I had to track radar, what weapon i was on, ammo amounts, and what direction my top toros was facing!
what did they say about mech games!
oh man, I feel so left out.
But on a more serious note. I think these games do increase twitch re-actions for people, to be even remotely good you have to be able to identify a things distance, and even slight variations on where it exists in space to determine if you are going to fire at it.
Just taking medal of honor for example, many times on servers which force the skin type, it can be very hard to determine if someone is behind a wall because of the lack of contrast between default uniforms and the background.
The ability to know how thick an object is can really help determine how abnormal its shape is versus what it should be.
Anyone thats played these games a while, and has become familiar with where things are on there maps can almost run them backward. I used to play on a map called canalzone (the original for qwtf) that was "huge" and I could run it backward, or looking straight at the ground, as long as i knew where my start positon was. You need a good feel for how large the 3d space is relative to your character in the game to be able to do these kinds of things.
Now on games where weapons have travel time in space, knowledge of 3d space is even more important, games such as mechwarrior 4, coupled with some lag, require to know the movement speed in space so you can lead the target. If you dont have any idea how they are going to change relative shape vs distance in space, you are much less likely to hit your target.
so the hypothesis that games can affect how you determine things in 3d space seems completely plausible to me, because having "trained" people to play many 3d games myself (planetfortress.com/canalzone) (www.themfb.com search on wayback machine or google) I can tell you that the ability to have a good twitch instinct and judgment factors about objects in 3d space can really help.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
I had been playing quake3 for well over a year and my rail skills were pretty good. I went to camp for a month and took an elective called shooting sports. I got to shoot a shotgun for the first time in my life. My first time to ever shoot at moving targets. I was in a class with people who shot lots of guns, and I did the best :P
http://phreakinb.com
Teenage males that use the Internet regularly can identify pr0n actresses with 70% greater accuracy than teenage males that don't use the Internet regularly.
-Teckla
You forgot your "S" nub. CS hasn't improved your sp3lling skIlLZ thouGH. Game over. You lose.
Looks like your reflexes are failing you, better get back to video games.
regularly could track up to five objects at a time - 30% more than non-players.
That's 3.5 objects for a non-player... hrmmm... I'd like to see that guy who only tracked half an object.
That like an increase of 1.15 objects, up from 3.85. This is significant folks!!!! Gimmie more!!!
I didn't think so
Should I try driving two cars in my car? *hooks up Ps2 and Vc to Car and proceeds to drive it while running away from the police in real life and GTA.
talking to real people improves social skills, and getting outside for a bike ride improves physical skills.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
Sitting in front of a CRT all day playing games does wonders for your eyes. Those l33t visual skills aren't going to help when you can't see more than 10 feet in front of you. You're better off playing with yourself, at least going blind that way is an urban legend.
Visual skills as in hand-eye. not M$ Visual Studio.NET Skillz... IDIOT
i think a better way of looking it is that games in general excersize the mind in stimulating and entertaining ways. i remember playing quite a bit of "perfection" (the one where you fit the square peg in the square hole, triangluar in the triangle hole, etc. before time runs out) and man, while a challenge, really works the association muscle in the brain. i think anything where you have to solve problems and actually think is good...whereas tv sometimes is a numbing experience (i say sometimes cuz back when i had cable, i actually would only watch the discovery channel).
that is all.
R.I.P.
do video games make chicks dig you? The answer is hell no, unless they're nerdy as hell.
Repeal the DMCA!
I seriously dedicated my life towards video games at an early age... Stuff like the last starfighter, and robotech... talking about video game simulation players owning it up.
At 6 yrs old, like 1983, I swore I'd work the best I could towards playing video games. Theres been ups and downs, but I'm one of the best video game players around now. I've gotten more skills from playing video games than much of anything else. Most of the skills are strategy, as even action games dictate a strategy.
I'm having fun now making my own game having experienced all that came before. I would be unable to compete, but I'm using CrystalSpace, an open source 3d engine.
God spoke to me
... You can't actually play real sports ... You can't (or are unwilling to) socialize ... You can't see your hand in front of your face without your glasses ... You never go outside ...
Yeah maybe you should put down the headphones and read a book..
Terrorists win.
This seems logical to me! A lot of speed reading techniques helps you train your field of perception. I.e. normally you only "see" a word or two at a time... With the right techniques you can gradually increase the number of words you read at a time. :)
Trained speed readers percieve whole lines at a time! I remember my former English teacher in high school read a third of a page in a glance - He read REALLY fast!
Check out this google search! Now go learn it!!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Because of this, my vision and reflexes are kind of sharp -- at least in a specific way. I've had many moments that remind me of the scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where the older lady knocks over the cup to test the young girl's reflexes. She snatches the cup without thinking. I'm always catching things while they are being knocked over or grabbing things out of midair, just out of conditioning.
However, I suck at a lot of other physical things, most sports, and am a bit of a klutz at times. It's kind of like working on your bicep over and over, but neglecting other things. You've got this unnaturally strong bicep but the rest is much weaker. And I don't juggle, thinking of how this is going to pay off in all these other ways. I just like to juggle.
I'm pretty much just speculating, but I would suspect that playing a lot of video games gives you good visual skills that probably don't translate into a lot of other real-world stuff simply because the abilities that are developed are so narrow.
Compare to a football quarterback (you see, Marge, there are jocks, and nerds. Being a jock...oh, sorry, I digress). As a QB, you have to track several receivers, the pass rushers, keep an eye on the game clock, and keep your wits under the very real-world threat of being flattened by some steroid-raging linebacker. Plus all the physical skills, and the playbook knowledge (no, it ain't the same as programming C++, but you don't have 300-lb Bubba bearing down on you while you are coding either). There's a much wider range of skill development there, that encompasses both the physical and mental. Not to say that there are not other ways to develop those things, but let's just say that if you gain any skills out of playing Quake 12 hours a day, be thankful.
I learned two things from video games:
Strategy and reflexes, both help my driving.
Aside from one incident where I almost rammed someone's car after playing too much destruction derby, I am a wicked driver.
I've physically dodged some wild accidents, and once I powerslided to dodge an accident... Since my car is shorter perpendicular to the road as opposed to straight on it, I avoided an accident by a few inches... People who don't use their turn signal are asking for it.
Mainly I avoid accidents by putting a ton of car lengths ahead of me... Sure aggressive drivers can juke in, but those fuckers are just as likely to juke out too. All that dodging is not a sign of a good driver, just a retard.
God spoke to me
Without games you probably wouldn't have survived this long. Imagine all the additional auto accidents and knife mishaps you would have suffered without all the training. ;-)
...but at what cost. You have the loss of social skills, not to mention they lower sexual skills. Does not seem like a fair trade off to me.
is that with games you are honing your center vision, able to track more objects in a limited field of view. however, this would mean you have lower peripheral vision capabilities.
i mean, brain only has this much computation power, spending a lot of time staring straight into the screen in front of you would certainly hone a different type of ability than, say, soccer, where you'd better be aware of the guy behind you who would probably put a leg in your crouch in risk of a red card but toss you out of the gene-pool?
no i did not elaborate as much as i could on this theory - i am feeling sleepy - so finding more evidence to support this theory is left as an excercise to the reader.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
"A new study not published in Nature Magazine suggests that Tetris improves block-rotating skills. Among other things, young adults who played as ten hours of the block-rotating game Tetris regularly could rotate blocks more efficiently - 30% more than non-players (according to international block-rotation standards). Apparently, the game type is important, as ten hours of action games such as Grand Theft Auto and Medal of Honor failed to improve test scores."
i tell my wife that's the reason for me buying games. helps keep my laparoscopic surgury skills honed.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
...that 90% of the respondents had excellent recollection when the items in question consisted of one blue key, one red key, and one yellow key.
p.s. first post!
If only...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Several friends of mine credit their above average vocabularies and problem solving abilities to RPGs among other games
As opposed to living in a van, down by the river, it is always a good idea to interact with others, on most any level (going to the 7-Eleven...talking with your probation officer...apologizing for the dog, when he eats your math homework, etc.), if you wish to improve your vocabulary and problem solving skills. Crediting RPGs is like thanking the YMCA for keeping city buses from running around with large blank spaces on their sides.
It's called interactivity, and without it, said aforementioned skills tend to wane quickly.
And don't anyone let it slip that there is only one real person playing RPGs, anywhere...if that guy learns the responses during the game are preprogrammed, and he is actually there alone, he just might decide to cheat, and teleport the whole virtual gang to a van...down by the river!.
I've been slowly losing my vision and was wondering what was actually causing it. It's getting so bad I've had to set my fonts to 18 minimum. So I've been wondering if it's from streigning in front of a CRT for 10 hours at a time. Turns out I just needed to clean my screen from all the pr0n juice.
budumdum.
put the what in the where?
With the right joystick you dont have to worry about torso twist. I got hooked on ghost bear legacy and mercenaries in 5th grade with an old M$ Sidewinder joystick. Great for that game, throtle, hat switch for eye movement, the whole handle twisted for torso position...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Friends, ever heard of hand-eye coordination? It's just another way of saying "visual skills." Hand-eye coordination was first hyped in the 80s as a benefit of videogaming. Here is a USA Today article that makes mention of that "benefit." (BTW, I'm putting the word in quotation marks because I'm wondering how important it is to have good visual skills/hand-eye coordination. Does that benefit truly outweigh all the damn time we hard-core gamers waste?)
So, um, those who spend more time training their perceptual systems to track and identify objects are better at tracking and identifying objects? Next thing you know, they'll start telling us that spending more time reading makes people better at reading...
This article immediately reminded me of an Onion article a while back... it's scary how reality mirrors this parody...
all the while their reflex whatevers increase they get fat asses like cowboyneal and the perks of gaming are rendered useless
"young adults who played action games such as Grand Theft Auto [...] regularly could track up to five objects at a time"
not only that, but these young adults were also 22% more successful at car jacking, 46% had better aim with lethal weapons, and 27% could on average outrun law enforcement officers.
yay everybody wins
Maybe this is why the military is trying to recruit gamers? I'd suspect they have access to this kind of info a year or so before other people do, which might explain the army FPS game that was released recently.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
As for Tetris, well, I'm a bit surprised that those who got into the higher levels (after 10 hours of play, one should be able to anyway) didn't improve their hand/eye coordination at least a little bit.
I play a mod for Quake3 that is probably the fastest, craziest mind numbingly difficult first person shooter there is.
I've played it and other first person shooters for about 3 years and I can definately say it improves your spatial awareness and hand eye coordination.
People have also commented on my low reaction times and general ability to notice things.
The thing is, I reckon sports can improve these areas as well if not more effectively. Playing games doesn't exactly get you fit either so its important to do both.
I know I packed more boxes and stuff at a go when I was moving from my old apartment because of Tetris.
I know video games helped me. I was born with pretty bad eyes... astigmatism, near-sightedness, and a strong tendency to be cross-eyed. I was in glasses by the time I was three, and I had to wear *hideous* glasses in pre-school and 1st grade, with tape on the lenses to block my eyes from crossing inwards. I went for vision therapy for several years.
:-). (*)
:-)
The biggest thing they wanted was for me to get hand-eye coordination. I basically had none. The biggest exercise was a tennis ball on a tether. When they took it and swung it like a pendulum at my head, I literally could not bat it away before it bounced off me (sounds mean, but it was more like a game ). No change after three years of this.
So my parents bought me an Atari 2600 somewhere around age 7. By the end of that summer, I had quite good hand-eye coordination (and had flipped the score on Defender a few times ). My mom was more than glad to let me play games endlessly after that
(*) of course, I think 20 years later now, looking at a CRT screen all the time has probably degraded my vision back a bit too
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Benefits:
- Boost in visual skills
- Games teach problem-solving abilities, perseverance, pattern recognition, hypothesis testing, estimating skills, inductive skills, resource management, logistics, mapping, memory, quick thinking, and reasoned judgements. (Click here for the source of that info.)
- Games boost self-esteem. (Here again is the source for that.)
Drawbacks:
- Massive amount of time spent playing. I can't count how many times I've at my computer from 6 PM to 8 AM playing Civilization III. (The time spent playing could have been better spent studying, reading, exercising, getting to enjoy the world, travelling, etc.)
- The solitariness of most games. There seems to be a self-perpetuating cycle in which a socially-isolated person plays games in order to avoid having to be around other people. But then the act of being alone playing games makes you even more socially isolated. I wasted most of my childhood with Nintendo when I should have been outside playing. My college years were similarly wasted with computer games.
I guess the main point about games is, don't the drawbacks outweigh the benefits? (BTW, I'm on week number 3 of overcoming my computer game addiction. I had to go cold turkey. Good luck to others if you're in the same boat.)
You must play videogames.
I have access to the full text through a site license as a student at a major research university, and not only can I not find that text, the article starts on page 534.
On page 537: "Competing interests statement: The authors decleare that they have no competing financial interests."
Mod this libelous garbage back to where it belongs.
I bet Dance Dance Revolution players would be ahead of the curve. Let the flames begin.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I didnt see any improvement in my coordination skills playing Ultra Vixen, maybe ive playing the wrong kind of games
The package said "Windows XP or better. Pentium Class Processor or better"... So I got a Mac with OS X
I scanned past the white-on-white comment, and I didn't read the "make check payable" line as a part of the "quote" from the paper.
So yeah, that's pretty funny.
50% Informative
20% Insightful
20% Funny
So assuming the moderators are a representative sample, most people took you seriously. Still, sorry if my little flame ends up hurting your karma any.
Despite my tremendous fragging ability, I still can't walk a stright line, even when sober. So much for those cat like reflexes....
Karma: Bad. Mostly because the only moderators that notice me are conservatives.
NYTImes: "Video-Game Killing Builds Visual Skills" amazing. But why didnt they entitle it: "Video Games That Contain Cars and Roads Build Visual Skills" ..or ..
"... Firehydrants..." or whatever ...
The most likely fact is that games that require lots of fast eye-movement have the noted effect ..
But "...Killing..." must sell more papers, im sure.
tkjtkj@charter.net
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
I hope I am not the only one who can attest to years of mudding having increased typing speeds and accuracy. when its a matter of life or death, you learn speedily to type accurately. when I started mudding back in the 7th grade, I was typing at like 15-20wpm /10 errors, now after nearly a decade of mudding, I type ~100wpm /2 errors. I will admit though, that some terms from my mudding days have seeped into my daily vocabulary; more than once I have said things like "let me check my eq" when I meant to imply "let me see if I have that" ... it gets scary...
let us not forget the hours and hours that we gamers have wasted on mini-puzzles and macro-puzzles that are tossed into games so frequently these days. I know for a fact that those skills have come in handy for me in the form of increased logical problem identification speeds.
I think I should shut up know, I have a feeling I am going to be modded into oblivion...
I'm a little tea pot.
FAILURE.
it's a joke. mod it funny.
IIACP: Having read a few comments I'd just like to clarify a few things. I haven't read the paper itself, but from the summaries I've tried to work out what the findings are. In a way the main thrust of the paper seems to be being missed because of the headline grabbing video games element. Basically, from what I've read, the authors are claiming that game players (either from self-report or through training) perform better on tests of *visual selective attention*. Please note, this is not the same as saying "can see better" or "are more intelligent". Instead, this refers to the efficiency with which visual items can be selected and processed. The more important finding here is not really that "computer games are good for you" but that there is transfer of perceptual learning across domains. Now, it is no secret that training improves performance on visual attention tasks; I myself was invovled in a study where people did a simple keep-the-cursor-on-the-target task for *20 days*. This may surprise you, but they never reached asymptote ("maxxed out") performance. They just got better. And better. And better. But normally, practice effects are restricted to specific domains; if you practice tracking targets, you improve only on tracking targets. Another test of visual attention, say detecting letters amongst a stream of rapidly presented numbers, wouldn't benefit. Thus what makes this paper Nature worthy (I'm sure many biochemists etc. are were wondering) is that training on video games benefits a number of domains of visual attention. Now, this said, a simple hypothesis comes to mind which is that, of course, video games like Medal of Honour or whatever contained a variety of elements; spatial 3D (navigating around), spatial 2D (reading gauges, checking health), an element of reaction time/twitch responding etc. Thus it is perhaps not entirely surprsing that there is transfer of perceptual learning from a modern FPS to a range of attentional tasks. By contrast, we would not expect Tetris to generalise so widely because it is very specific in what it requires players to do. It is purely 2D, motion is one direction only etc. A counterpoint to that argument is to suppose that visual attention isnt a grab-bag of individual elements as I argue above, but rather a unified ability that somehow a modern FPS can uniquely tap (this appears to be what some of the commentators are saying, its hard to tell though). I'd say this is fairly controversial. Finally, it is important to note that the paper simply does not speak to arguments about personality and character and social behavior: whether games "make you clever/dumb/violent/passive/etc." Its really addressing a more technical issue.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Tetris only has one important object on the screen at a time, I wonder how much visual object tracking would improve someone made a version of Tetris where you had to control two or more falling bricks at a time.
This reminds me of when I began to study music theory, and started to listen to multiple instruments at the same time. Most people who listen to classical music, or any highly arranged music, can pick out and track multiple melodies, including subtle ones whose only purpose is to enhance the piece. Contrast that to most rock (or any popular music,) where there is one main melody, a bass line that hardly varies from the melody, and no complex vocal harmony.
Most of my friends cannot listen to and enjoy complex music (other than as relaxing background noise.) The human mind adjusts too in environment, and if exposed to complex auditory stimuli, we learn to understand it quicker, and follow it with greater detail. If exposed to complex visual stimuli, we learn to parse it faster. This probably applies to all senses.
The real question is, as games improve in areas such as 3d audio, will other senses besides visual spacial object tracking improve?
I agree, people just lose their eyes with time. Almost any profession will tax the eyes, from welding to jewlery design to banking and programming.
Staring at a CRT WILL screw up your mind though, ever 'burn out' on a PC and forget to eat, or get sick after realizing that you've been staring at an electron gun bouncing up and down 85 times/second for eight hours?
I'm thinking about moving to an LCD so I can fall asleep easier, I get 'amped' on CRTs late at night and have trouble falling asleep, when I use the laptop it's much easier to close my eyes, it's even easier if I sit down with dead-tree editions of what I'm reading on the machine.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Walgreens called. Your prescription of chill pills is ready.
This is true. As a kid I spent hours and hours even days and weeks in a hospital due to a heart condition. What do you think I did while I was laying in that bed? I played games, tons of games, sometimes even with one hand when they had the IVs running through me. It was not until I was 12 or so that I actually was able to run for more than five minutes and I was amazed when I found out how good my basketball skills were. I have a great feeling that games helped this out, as I have a great ability to track random crap and am pretty good at marksmenship as well. I may never know if this is what helped me out, but I sure believe it did.
Jeesh, if GTA3 can do that, I wanna know what a game like Ikaruga can do.
whatever, that was some fine humor.
you just didn't like being duped!
Among other things, young adults who played action games such as Grand Theft Auto and Medal of Honor regularly could track up to five objects at a time - 30% more than non-players.
How is this going to help in the real world when you die young from extreme obesity?
Yeah, because they were going fucking insane. Can you imagine 10 straight hours of Tetris? I know I've had a few long runs...
"I'll take a valium and Guiness for a 1000 Alex."
I've been playing video games since I bought my first Nintendo at age 12 (or so). I played Doom through college and Half-Life through medical school (I studied a little too ;-)
As a resident, I'm learning to do endoscopic procedures, such as colonoscopy, upper GI endoscopy, and a few other procedures ending with -oscopy. Manual dexterity and coordination play a significant role in performing these procedures well. You can read the entire endoscope manual about which wheel looks left, right, up or down, and which button takes a picture. But, you've gotta get your hands on the scope and start driving to gain any proficiency.
After my first day of endoscopy, I called my mom to tell her that all those hours spent in front of the Nintendo were now benefitting my career. She scoffed and said it was probably because I could play the piano. But, I remain convinced.
Just my $0.02!
What about playing Tetris while pretending to "medicate" yourself?
Will I retire or break 10K?
(*) of course, I think 20 years later now, looking at a CRT screen all the time has probably degraded my vision back a bit too :-)
Indeed. My eyesight is now only called that out of habit. A normal person wearing my glasses can see through time.
The coolest voice ever.
I can track lots of objects at once.
h -duh ....
The main drawback is that my ears only respond to two alternating pitches.
Duh-duh
Duh-duh
Duh-duh
Duh-duh
Duh-duh
Du
Duh-duh
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Visit Edge and be sure to visit our forums while you're there.
-1: Slashbot with no sense of humor.
Why not try some physical stimulation to improve your vision - play Soccer or Tennis. Both require excellent vision and quick reflexes.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
RPG...'R' is for roleplay and 'G' is for game, and when you're done playing games, you have to live....like it or not.
:)
You can 'play' at being someone, or you can 'be' someone. Naturally, we all have this as a choice. Some chose to move on and be...some stay and play. Either way, life sucks and then you die, so there is clearly no percentage in listeing to me
Troll, or no sense of humor? You decide.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
whenever i opens a thumbnail gallery p0rn, i knew right away which image i would like to see enlarged
d035 7hi5 100k 1ik3 4n l337 5i6 2 j00 ?
After reserchers found out that 'Grand Theft Auto' improves visual skills - the sales of this
game in the Middle East skyrocketed with strongest
results in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Gamers in this region eagerly await new modpack
with set of missions on which the players
have to steal a humvee, a tank and a helicopter
from US Army - then use them to steal explosives
and finally use them to blow out the infidels.
When would these superior tracking skills ever come in handy? Seriously. Other than being in combat or some intense assembly line job where you had to sort different objects.
just not many people on the server, so they never caught on to where he was camping...
Camping with a shotgun though, that's pretty impressive. Most campers just stick with the rail!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
as a juggler, i'd just like to put in a plug for juggling. as a geek i've also grown up playing video games, MUD's, etc., and this study's results make sense to me. the on-the-fly type of thinking that video games require is a transferable skill that is helpful in many arenas.
:) it's not even conscious - i see something falling, and i automatically reach for it. this would be bad if that something were burning hot, but anyway...
but in terms of visual coordination, i'd have to say juggling is leaps and bounds over video games. i wasn't young when i picked up juggling (about 18 years old), so i definitely have a basis for a before/after comparison. i started off not knowing how to even do a 3-ball cascade, and 4 years later (i'm 22 now), i'm now up to working on a 6-ball fountain and a 5-club cascade. it's immensely improved several types of tracking: 1. a round object moving quickly (think ping-pong or tennis), or 2. an object falling (think the scene in crouching tiger / hidden dragon when the cup falls off the table and the guy catching it), or 3. multiple objects moving independently (think 3-card monty where you have to keep track of EACH cup, not just one), etc.
as for the crouching tiger/hidden dragon reference, yes i come pretty close to what he does in the movie
Researchers discover that television improves valuable looking skills.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Driving is number one on my list. If you can track everything going on on all four sides of you by watching all mirrors and peripheral vision at once, you are going to be a lot safer... over the years I've avoided several rear-endings by other cars because I knew when I had to stop with any degree of quickness they would be right on top of me and got out of their way while they slid halfway through where my car would have been if I hadn't been paying attention.
So not only tracking multiple objects, but understanding the "thinking" behind those objects (all of which you are doing in most video games) can keep you safe while driving. I find a lot of drivers are like a very badly written AI that telegraphs future behavior by every means except through the cars indicators!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thus, we can conclude that playing video games is known to improve visual perception skills. This suggests that the superiority of the video game players over the non-video game players is at least partially due to training gained from years of playing video games.
Clearly there also is the selection effect you mentioned-- By my observation, some people definitely are 'turned off by games' because they 'can't track that many objects at once': They're called females. ON AVERAGE, men have better spatial skills than women (it's obviously more complex than that, but I don't want to get derailed). That probably leads males towards games, at least in the beginning, because they can do well at them. From there, the males' visual perception skills are improved even more by many years of video game playing. So, I think there is also evidence that people who are better at video games are more likely to play them.
But, the article clearly showed that BOTH men and women showed improvement in their visuospatial skills after playing Medal of Honor for a week. Regardless of who is attracted to video games in the first place, we can definitively conclude that playing certain kinds of video games improves visual attention for everyone.
~percepto
The term "outside the box" is squarely within the box at this point.
I've had hundreds of accidents as the result of video games... I've driven Jaguar's off cliffs, flipped onto my back in a derby, crashed into walls snowboarding, got shot while going into a secret military bunker, and countless others... Play video games at your peril!
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
I used to get run over by tanks everyday, but after play GTA it doesn't happen so much.
But working at a screen for a long time without a break can have effects similar to reading or writing uninterruptedly, and may make your eyes feel 'tired' or sore.
It's now 09:42 AM, and I've been working with my thesis since 5PM yesterday. And before I head to bed, I drop by slashdot. Somebody shoot me.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
For some reason that popular misconception really pisses me off. THE BRAIN IS NOT A MUSCLE!!!!! IT CONTAINS NO MUSCLES!!!!! Did I yell loud enough?
I'm really curious just how one can get a 30% improvement in the number of objects that can be tracked, when the final number is FIVE... It's not like you can track 3.7 objects to start with.
Frankly, reports like this, with such basic lack of explanations, aren't even worth the non-existant paper they're (not) printed on.
"Although video-game playing may seem to be rather mindless, it is capable of radically altering visual attentional processing." - From BBC's Report
Mindless? Forgive me if I'm wrong but it isn't often someone falls asleep while in the middle of a fragging session. Personally I feel more dense than usuall after subjecting myself to 4 hours of the mindless tripe of the box.
Seriously, the one doing the real magic with vision is your brain. Just try to focus to the center of your screen and read anything outside the center. You can't, right? But you are aware what's in the entire screen.
Videogames are a good training, because you have to keep track at anything moving outside your focus, and of couse, lots of timing and quick reaction helps a lot too. In some games like Mario Bros you had to see what was going on in the entire screen, especially because almost everthing could go from one side of the screen to the other.
My new car is one with the headlights always on, and it is frustrating, I keep seeing reflections with the corner of my eye and I think it's something moving....
Videogame don't make you violent (any more than chess will), videogames make you better at being violent. ;-) If a person who's played CS since it's beta decided to wig out in a school with automatic guns, bombs and other weaponry they would certainly be more successful than someone who hasn't, and hell, they might even get away with it too if they are smart enough. But you get my reasoning here: Games don't make you go into school and shoot people, bullies who piss you off day after day and deserve every last bit of retrobution cause kids to do it.
;).
They forgot to mention a few things. On the fly planning, target tracking speed, movement prediction, etc all have a huge impact on how the brain works and how it percieves the world, not to mention that many games require teamwork, and that brings up a whole new discussion. Playing games like ut2k3 at super high speeds that tax the mind greatly is a super way to develope these abilities as at regular speed, you have time to make light conversation with yourself about your next move. Plus, they didn't test REAL players I'm guessing, or they tested console gamers. Test some CS or better yet, tribes2 players and see what happens
Also, Lots of players, my team as an example, use voice chat to communicate during games; the idea is we don't have to stop and type and we can have nice, idle conversation. In short, when one of the guys, who's 14 comes on and starts talking about how his life sucks, the other guys, aged 19 through 50 somethin talk back and give advice; he learns what a real friendship is, he learns that his parents are often right and often wrong, and he learns a multitude of life lessons from us. He's young and dumb as many kids are, but he's learning and I think thats why his parents let him play.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Learn tracking even more objects with juggling.org.
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
A few years ago, I mudded for a few months. I remember having placed various batch files in my C:\ directory such as L.BAT, G.BAT, and so on (this was back when I was using DOS). These commands were nothing but aliases to others (L was for DIR, G was for CD, etc.).
P.S. I don't use those commands anymore. Now I have trained myself to use ls and cd.
I credit my vocabulary, grammar, and spelling to reading good old fashioned books, which I've been reading since I was about six. Of course, one hazard of learning vocabulary from novels is that it may take a while to learn how to pronounce the words. It took me years to realize that the "b" is silent in subtle.
Ikaruga and Psyvariar!
Hey all.
I work in the lab that published this (I'm in acknowledgments) and it's really interesting to read your comments. Some things I feel obligated (at 5am) to clear up:
-We're not funded by any gaming interests, that's silly.
-Next, thanks to BlightThePower, who got here first. He's on the ball and made a lot of important clarifications for those who haven't read the paper (you should).
-We used console or PC video game players with some fairly strict criteria. They typically played 4 times a week or much more for hours at a time on the type of 3D game we're interested in. Now, I play a lot of video games, but these guys put me to shame.
-As many of you noted, the type of video game is important, and we're working to determine what characteristics are required for the boost. We're also looking at other things you all mentioned: for example, do RPGs, strategy, etc. improve some measures of flexible overall intelligence? We're not looking at hearing now (people's sound systems vary quite a bit) but it holds similarly interesting questions. This line of research actually began as an offshoot from research with the congenitally deaf.
-Also, I can't stress enough we trained people who'd never played and they improved significantly (girls improved just as much). This is as close as we could reasonably get to the causal link many of you were looking for.
-For Anonymous Coward above, I hope you come back to this thread and change your mind. Please read the paper and some primary school arithmetic (like percentages). I don't understand your criticisms in that context, otherwise I'd give you a longer response. It's true that there's a lot of explanation missing: the reason is that Nature severely limits the space available to individual articles. Look for subsequent articles that go into more details about the individual experiments, as well as data from new experiments (we've done a lot more since submitting the paper coming out today). I can tell you that the researchers involved are both very bright and very ethical. The data that came out more than met their high standards.
-The press is all over it for the wrong reasons, that's true. You readers know the type of articles that have been written about the negative emotional/social effects. We wouldn't touch that with a 10' pole because it's not what we studied. General comment: Many of the studies are quite unconvincing, due to their methods (ever hear of random sampling or anything other than a correlation?). The others are interesting but we have no comment. I'd say that's a 15' pole, plus I'm not the paper's author, so I guess I'm safe.
-You can't say that you're a better driver because you play video games. You might also be overconfident or inconsiderate. You might do 10 things at once while driving and end up much worse than most people. The data are solid, but be careful what you interpret.
-To those who think it's too obvious to deserve publication... hmm. I think the effect has some cognitive implications besides "you just get better." There are some important things going on here that deserve to be looked at and Nature agreed. For example:
-Importance! 1. We think it's important as an measure of plasticity; high order functions rarely change in this fashion. 2. In addition, like Blight said, it's rare that any specific task can have more general effects.
-Finally, the importance of the effect isn't for most of the people reading this. Don't get carpal tunnel just to improve visual selective attention. Its most immediate benefits might be with lesion or TBI patients who need help regaining lost faculties (not playing MOHAA, but adapted training regimens, for example). But then again, the Army (to our knowledge) hasn't done research like this, and still uses video games to train soldiers. I'm sure some unforeseen benefits will come. For now, it provides some fresh directions for research.
REPORT: TV HELPS BUILD VALUABLE LOOKING SKILLS
NEW YORK--A report released Monday by NYU's Center For Media Studies has found that television, accused by experts of diminishing children's attention spans and discouraging them from interacting with others, can actually help children as young as six months develop essential looking skills.
(...snip...)
See the news outlet linked above for rest. They were on top of this shit back in 1999.
Now maybe I can get my parents off my back. THey are always going on about wasting my life playing games. Now I can say I am improving my visual skills. Sweet!!!
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
everyone thinks I am in an unmarked olice car anyway, they just get out of my way, and I've gone up to 150kph many times without getting caught.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
Well, if you can trqack 5 objects at the same time, you're doing better than GTA: Vice City can do :)
:)
I mean, I can't be the only one who's noticed that GTA:VC does a rather nasty job of tracking vehicle which drive towards you and end up to your rear...yuou look back, and they've dissapeared! Same goes for the sim-people. So I'm wondering how they got this '5 object' thing...'cos GTA can't track 5
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Props to you for living the dream, though.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
> - The solitariness of most games.
You mean 'solitude'?
Not trolling. And I don't think it's the best word to use anyway. Maybe 'seclusion'.
NPR did a piece on it. To verify the results, there was a second study, wherein non-gamers were "trained" for 10 hours (playing Medal of Honour) and then tested. Their scores, while not quite as good as gamers, were significantly better than non-gamers, as well as better than their own scores before the training.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
I play games a lot. I have avoided a number of accidents with idiots thanks to good reflexes. (Sadly, one was unavoidable. Some lady looked like she was going to run a stop sign - I slowed down. She stopped. I let go of brakes, and when I was *in the intersection* she gunned it right and came out right in front of me.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Those who are clueless get frustrated by being unable to compete with the elite.
The "elite" know every little aspect of the game mechanics, almost making it a science (dealing with formulas, etc.), and have a blast.
I played a web-based strategy game called Planetarion a while ago. On a regular basis, people would have long debates on relative merits of various ships, and I would always have my trusty HP48 out during those IRC convos.
I'm seeing the same while playing EVE Online - Either you understand the mechanics of the economy and make mass profit, or you don't and you get ripped off because you're still mining a mineral no one wants because it USED to be valuable but too many people mined the same thing, flooding the market. It's hilarious how many people post on the EVE forums that the market us FUBAR and the economy is doomed based on the price of a single mineral, without bothering to check prices on other minerals and go mine something else.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
And what does this particular lecture have to do with the original claim that RPGs helped someone improve their vocabulary and social skills....with the impression being this could be a mainstream tool, as opposed to doing the real thing in person, meaning removing the mask and being with people as you, instead of escaping first or always, as I propose.
The three axis of abnormal psychology illustrate what happens when attitudes towards such things as escapism become a reflex to any and all contact with others. No one questions the value of play...no one should endorse it when it displaces true interactivity. Recreation is fine...hiding in fear over interaction is not. Even water is toxic when taken in large enough amounts.
Save me the RPG recruitment speech, and how recreational shapeshifting is good for the soul. No one claimed otherwise, so put the flag away.
What do you know about an unpleasant life? Batteries run down in the remote? Had to stay 30 minutes late before coming home? Missed that Zena re-run fest?
You have contact with other people...how can life ever be unpleasant...you should thank your cranky stars you have the opportunity to see the Sun rise. Some people curse that event, and with good reason, beyond Starbucks and Sizzler.
Yes, maybe gaming increases some perceptual and spacial skills - hey, maybe even some kinesthetic skills... but does the increase of these skills/abilities as a result of gaming have an inverse relationship to the ability of the gamer to get laid? (and chokin' the chicken to Dead or Alive does NOT count.)
----------------------
RKauffman s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p
One factor I wonder about in these experiments is the fact that endomorphs and ectomorphs have different nerve lengths in their bodies. Ectomorphs - the skinny beanpole types - actually have nerves that fire slower than those of an endomorph. Supposedly Endomorphs (and mesomorphs I believe.. I hope) have shorter nerve endings, thus faster signals, but they deplete more rapidly. Ectomorphs are built better for things like a marathon, long-term nerve firing with consistency, but with a loss in reaction time. Could be bullshit, but I definitely remember reading that somewhere.
As for tracking multiple objects... that almost seems to be a function of some lingering 'prey drive' in humans. I've just gotten a dog a little while ago, a kind with a high prey drive, and I have to remember to satisfy this desire in him with appropriate games (ball, frisbee, etc.) Humans are predators after all; stereo vision, incisors, etc. Dodging and rapid problem-solving in three dimensional space probably serves to satisfy a much older, darker part of our hindbrains.
After you play WipeOut Fusion for several weeks, all traffic looks damn slow. Makes you feel like you've got Bullet Time on your side.
Oh one last OT note: I just turned off Light Mode after using it for almost this whole year, and woooo! This colour scheme! Where's my bong?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
i guess your didnt read the article/hear the article on NPR.
They tested two groups, one that played at least 1 hour aday of FPS type games. They acored above average. A second group never really played games and scored average. They had them play only 10 hours of some FPS, which I think was medal of honor. Afterwards they retested them and found that they scored similairly to the video game players group.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
So non-gamers can track up to 3,846153846153846153846153846153 objects?
My website
My roomate did this study and I was going to wait to post it on /. until today when they were allowed by Nature to post the full-text of the article, but here it is, as a measly reply:
The effect of video games on visual attention
As a side note:
The guy who did the study is a 22-year old fellow gamer who wondered why his performance in visual attention tasks was so much higher than the average, and decided to start this as his senior research, which ended up taking 2.5 years to complete.
My Sig is Sauer.
seriously.
It takes the same kind of mentality to figure out a therom as it does to fight 5000 Imps so you can level up and gain the next fire spell.
I wonder if the rise of electronic media fuels the measured increase in IQs during the 20th century. The increase has been about 3 points per decade, or about 25 points since World War I when IQ tests were first broadly given to soldiers. (They were really "dumb farmboys" in the 19th century.)
During the 20th century you have movies, radio, television, video games, and the internet coming along about every 20 years to increasely stimulate young minds.
Life is good.
MORE NEWS FROM THE CENTER FOR THE TOTALLY OBVIOUS: Playing a musical instrument hones children's musical skills!
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
How are we going to reconcile the apparent willingness of slashdotters to accept that video games can have beneficial effects with their stubborn UNwillingness to accept that video games can have detrimental effects, e.g. an increase in violent behavior?
If games improve visual skills, does porn improve hand/eye coordination?
Just curious...
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The last time I played ten hours straight
of Tetris, I was able to track a lot of
objects at the same time. Mind you, they
were all blocks in my dreams, but I was
able to track each one in horrible, horrible
detail. I've never played Tetris since...
1. Buy yourself a car with anti-lock brakes. No, I'm not kidding, you're a fucking fool if you pass up this wonder of technology. Uneven streets, potholes, oily spots, sheets of water, steel plates...ALL of the above and more can cause you to lose traction when you brake. Streets suck, and they're only getting worse.
2. Assume everyone around you is a complete idiot. On multi-laned highways, never sit in a driver's blind spot, either give a half a car length or pass him. Even more, be aware of other drivers and their intentions. Watch them, you will notice distinct patterns, such that you can anticipate a driver's intent even when the asshole doesn't use a signal. BE CAREFUL OF ANY ERRATIC DRIVERS, these are the worst because you cannot possibly predict their intent. Give them plenty of ground and sneak past only if it's safe.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
There's no evidence that working with display screen equipment is harmful to the eyes, nor that it makes visual problems worse, although a few people who have difficulties with their sight may become more aware of them. But working at a screen for a long time without a break can have effects similar to reading or writing uninterruptedly, and may make your eyes feel 'tired' or sore. You might find that it helps to look away from the screen from time to time and focus your eyes on a distant object.
Agreed but there are side effects to looking at a screen for an extended period of time. The major one is that you blink less. Normally you would blink every couple of seconds or so during activities like walking, painting, etc. If you are reading, you blink less - about once every 5-10 seconds. With a CRT computer screen, the average period between blinks can extend beyond 30 seconds. This causes the eye to dry out and causes soreness and irritation. I find that LCD screens are much easier to work with. Funnily enough, just having your monitor a little lower on your desk means that your eyes are slightly more closed and this can help reduce the evaporation rate off the surface of the eye.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Just wanted to say hey to Buzz. You were an inspiration to me as a player and your cz site helped me immensely when I started playing on the CTSNet CZ server. From that point on I was hooked on a depth of gameplay that I had only previously gotten from Mechwarrior 2 and RPGs, and what I learned from that map and your site helped me a great deal to do everything I eventually did in TFC (despite the feelings of many in TF about TFC).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
As a life long video game player from Pong -> Atari -> Intellivision -> NES -> Sega -> SNES -> Dreamcast -> PS -> NEO -> N64 -> PS2 & PC
;)
I can say my hand eye coordination is wonderful. With my weapon of choice on a range to a shot-pull it takes little time for me to adapt adjust and get zero'd in.. however.. those umpteen hours have taken their toll on my wrists.. I can no longer battle on the pad as I once did.. I can no longer play a pc game as full frontal as Decent and Quake I-II did.. I can't do one wrist activity after another.. my job, bass playing, video games.. had to drop the bass.. too much wrist action.. so job, games, and now carpentry is where I play..
I love games.. I'll die playing them.. if my wrists fail I'll learn to do it with my toes or my head
but all of these studies, for any avid good reactionary gamer is a grand 'Duuuh'..
-M-
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
I've thought that video games are good for the player for a while. Wish I'd thought of running an experiment to test my theory! http://www.foxnews.com/ also contains a writeup of the study's findings. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,88036,00.html
I've been vindicated.
I'm trying to read the fine article! Where's my nearest institution that subscribes to Nature? I'm not willing to pay 18 US dollars just to read this one article!
Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to the library I go.
I finally managed to kick my addiction to Fallout! Everytime I start to get the shakes, I just load up Total War, and after 10 or 12 hours of playing this I don't feel like playing Fallout anymore. Hooray for the twelve step program!! (Step 1:play something else for an hour) (Step 2:play for another hour) (Step 3:play for another hour) ...
I can't beleive they found 33 men between 18 and 23 who have never played video games before.
That seems like quite a strech, unless they did there recruiting in Amish country.
Johnkoerner.com
Don't sit so damn close to the TV playin that 'nintendo or you'll be wearing glasses the size of coke bottles when you're older!
Flash forward twenty years in the future to a man who didn't listen and still has perfect 20/20 vision.
I showed you Grandma! I showed you allllll!!!!
No, they didn't forget to mention anything. They discussed only the issues that their experiment specifically addressed. This was a real experiment (you know, with data and analysis and all), not just someone spouting anecdotes.
I have to say I respect Electronic Art, much more than his friend, Electronic Steve.
You don't play many RPG's do you?
I guess with a balance of pr0n masturbation making you blind and games helping eye sight, it all about evens out.
So apparently they went around checking people who like to play video games, and supprise, they are good at visual skills. Doesn't sound like much of a story here.
I had seen the report on TV and I would like to try to show my parents that games aren't bad. They always say that the games make us act terrible, so we have our computer privilages removed for a week.
bla