Games As A Multitasking Aid?

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."

Comments

Re:depends

[GiMP]

I think the point is that games like Quake teach you skills that are often learnt by hunters. These skills are that of remembering paths, solving puzzles, etc. I would not be surprised if playing Quake strenthened one's ability to learn and perform such tasks like programming or learning linux/unix.

Note that my references to Quake are in respect to the one, original Quake.. the versions 2 and 3 of Quake are wholy diffenent animals.

Female Gamers and Multitasking

[quinkin]

I agree with this article in general, but it is not only the management of the mutiple information streams that is learnt, but also management the of stress induced by this information "overload".

All of us have had the experience where we felt we should have been able to complete some task/race/frag/whatever but became "flustered" and hence failed to respond appropriately within the time constraints.

I had previously considered this exact subject as a contributing factor in the different percentages of game type usage between males and females. In particular with regards to the physiological differences in brain morphology between the sexes.

Women have a measurably larger corpus callosum and anterior commisure - both resposible for interconnecting hemispheres of the brain - and this has long been assumed to be the cause of the equally measurable advantage that women have over men in (non-spatial) multi-tasking.

I assume this would have an effect on exactly what, on average, representatives from each sex would find challenging or tedious in the contect of gaming.

I have wondered how much research the game production studios have put into these concepts. The game market is maturing very rapidly, and any companies that can effectively leverage this previously largely untapped audience will have a huge advantage over their competitors...

I would love to hear any feedback from women /. readers, especially any games that you really like/dislike.
(And before the "there are no women on /." posts start, my wife reads it so STFU).

Q.