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Games As A Multitasking Aid?

Posted by simoniker on from the do-this-and-this-while-doing-this dept.

Thanks to the MIT Technology Review for their article discussing the value of videogames in teaching multitasking skills. The opening paragraph posits: "Playing computer games doesn't shorten kids' attention spans - it helps them to manage competing demands in the new era of 'continuous partial attention.'", and goes on to suggest that "...much as earlier civilizations used play to sharpen their hunting skills, we use computer games to exercise and enhance our information processing capabilities", although the article's author, Dr.Henry Jenkins, warns that these new skills "...should not come at the expense of older forms of literacy."

2 of 21 comments (clear)

  1. "exercise and enhance our information processing" by Andy+Smith · · Score: 4, Informative
    we use computer games to exercise and enhance our information processing capabilities
    No we don't. We use them for fun. Any enhancement of our "information processing" is an accidental bonus. There may be rare cases when specially written/selected games are used by carers to help people who are suffering from physical or mental problems. But games are never designed, marketed or purchased on the strength of how they might enhance our information processing.
  2. Re:"exercise and enhance our information processin by vaporakula · · Score: 3, Informative

    You have a point in that it is never a deliberate thing (buying a game to "enhance our information processing"), but a lot of the "fun" you are talking about is about pushing our brains: where to best fit this L-block, learning the pattern of the spikes shooting out of the ground, how to stop the enemy from repairing their tank.

    Its all about Situational Awareness, a concept the military has known about for a long, long time. Good games (the fun ones) are all about situational awareness: knowing the environment, the actions of other characters, the potential for your own character or moves. The more you know about what is happening in the game world around you, the better a player you can be. To improve in the games, we improve our situational awareness (information processing capabilities) within that game.

    I wonder if there were any activities 100 years ago that demanded anything like the continuous attention to several different things at the same time as a modern RTS game (production status, resource gathering, unit health, enemy status, all in different places)? I'm sure there was, I just can't think of a decent example... either way, it is a good way to show how games are training people to do lots of very different tasks at the same time.