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
I knew Virtual Valerie had to be good for me.
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.
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.
masturbating 3 times a day got rid of my carpal tunnel...
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
...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.)
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
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.
Odd. The dialogue in many of the console RPGs that I have played would, IMO, lead to a decrease in verbal skills. What kind of spoony friends do you have?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
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.
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.
Personally I blame, er praise, RPGs for my full backpack. Thanks to needing every random item known to mankind to beat the evil boss and save the world my day to day backpack has way too much shit in it.
Do I really need my laptop when I go out today? What about sunglasses? Extra memeory for the digital camera? Wait, do I even need the camera. OF COURSE I DO!@#!@# WHO KNOWS WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN!@#$!R
I really do believe RPGs can help one home problem solving skills, something that seems to be pretty lacking in our society these days. Of course I don't have any proof for this but it seems that everyone I know who likes and is good at RPGs are pretty good at solving problems but not all of these people are what would normally be considered smart.
--- I do not moderate.
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...
"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
You may not think so when your mouse hand is still twitching in your sleep...
That's not a soda... it's a caffeine delivery device!
I never leave the house without my towel.
You must play videogames.
Hey, you sass that hoopy anonymous loser? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
You fail to mention the part where it's well known that reading or writing uninterruptedly for long periods of time can result in vision problems.
Dance Dance Revolution taught me how to pick up beats really quickly. Classical music let me pick out 'strings' of sound, even if it were people in big groups I could pick out one voice to listen to. Games that throw a lot at you at once like those shoot-em-ups let me track a bunch of different velocities/trajectories/objects at once. Games like Thief and Thief 2 with really good positional audio taught me to pick out where a sound is coming from with very good accuracy. However, that new Wario Ware game for the Gameboy Advance teaches you ADD.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
(*) 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'.
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.
I used to get run over by tanks everyday, but after play GTA it doesn't happen so much.