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Video Games Lead To Quick Thinking Skills
shmG writes "Parents who dismiss video games as mindless entertainment with no intrinsic value for their children may not have a leg to stand on anymore thanks to science. Cognitive scientists from the University of Rochester have proven action based video games train people to make quick, accurate decisions. These skills acquired from video games, which help players develop a heightened sensitivity to their surroundings, can be used in real world applications. This includes multitasking, driving, reading small print, keeping track of friends in a crowd, and navigating around town."
Creating first post people everywhere
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Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
the article was tl;dr
...read this on Ars and saw it on Engadget days before it made /.
It's pretty obvious to anyone who cares enough to pay attention. But I guess since it's non-gamers deriding gaming they haven't really developed the awareness to pick up on things like that.
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
The ONE article I care to read and there's a popover ad that refuses to go away.
**sigh**
I am utterly convinced that sitting in front of a computer as a pre-teen, staring at a computer for hours at a time trying to figure out how to get through infocom games has given me a huge mental payoff through my life.
I know grand theft auto helped me learn learned how to drive, and perhaps how to lose the cops.
It would be interesting to know what sorts of questions that the participants were asked to perform. That is to say, were these puzzles that involved logical thought or ones that, while still having right and wrong answers, could be considered "quick decisions" in their own right?
Umm.. my sense of direction is so bad that I was given a GPS for Christmas. Navigating around town versus Vvanderfell? It's not really the same thing.
I actually agree quite a lot with the summary, I'm legally blind, I have no depth perception and I had a lot of trouble tracking moving objects (like frisbees or baseballs). When started playing video games I started to notice that my reflexes were getting a little better the more I played. Soon I was able to catch a frisbee and throw it back. It was an amazing change for me.
I've also noticed that I have some innate ability to make intricate maps of everywhere I go. I never get lost (this is important as I can't read street signs without assistance). I'm not sure if playing video games where map memorization is key or what but I do seem to be better at it than many of my non-gamer friends.
Interesting stuff...
crazy dynamite monkey
I once played Call of Duty for 72 hours straight. On my way to the 7-11 to get another case of Code Red I heard a loud bang right behind me. Instantly I spun around, dove to the ground, and emptied the clips on the two handguns I keep strapped to my sides at all times in order to fend off any crazy baseball-bat-wielding maniacs (I play a lot of Grand Theft Auto too). Anyway, it turns out it was just a school bus full of kids backfiring, but the incident gave me a lot of confidence in my ability to react quickly in any given situation. Shame about the kids, though.
when I wasd type. Not sure wasd about decisiveness though.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Masturbation as a teen makes you a better lover in adult life ......
"all hands on deck !!!!!"
Those stupid QTEs since Shenmue mustve done something.
When I think to buy a pepsi or a coke, I press B B B B B B B B B to act on getting one of them
So video games affect our brains but violent video games don't.
I hope Slashdot responds with the same correlation != causation responses that accompany any "violent video games cause insert something here" claims... :)
Unless I can be shown where this actually IS proven causation...
I'm doing reports, reading /. and responding to email. Unfortunately, I also have a tendency to need to use obscenities and discharge my fire arm every few minutes...
"In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change" --Thich Nhat Hanh
Awesome.
... reminds me a a great Gary Larson cartoon from a while back:
1) Video games.
2) Heightened sensitivity to surroundings and quick accurate decisions.
3) ???
4) Profit!
But wait! there's more
http://gamerinvestments.com/video-game-stocks/index.php/2010/04/20/gary-larson-predicted-the-future-of-video-game-employment/
apparently CmdrTaco doesn't play enough games. I recall reading this just this last weekend.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
At least it would have been if I had developed quick thinking skills
Does this mean I can finally put my old MOHAA ranks and team leading experience on my resume?
Well, duh, of course playing Grand Theft Auto is going to make someone a "better" driver. :p
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Sigh, the issue is not gaming vs gaming. It's gaming vs other activities. This study gives no illumination upon the following question which is much more important than the one the study actually answered: Given a distribution of various activities that a (young) individual can engage in, including but not limited to physical activity, mathematics, reading, art, and video gaming, if the distribution is predominantly composed of video gaming, will the individual develop better aptitude to a median distribution of activities in their working and personal life? Improved reaction times and snap decision making might make you a better soldier (but even there, how does it compare to military training?), but would it help the majority of occupations? Of course, we can look at games from purely an entertainment point of view, in which case this is irrelevant, but the context set by the article for this discussion is about additional value with scope beyond the gaming activity itself. From my point of view, that is limited given what most people will do in life, and there are more beneficial activities they can do with some of their leisure time than just gaming. I do still play games, but solely for their entertainment value. Why do we need to look for justification beyond that to play games?
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
"You are damaged by the fall!"
I saw that while playing Rogue back in the early '80s. I'm still considering what I should do next.
Yeah, quick thinking, indeed . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I play many games, including ones that want you to navigate large cities, and my skill navigating a city in meat-space has definitely not improved--I'm terrible at it. Can I get my money back?
video game: LSD.
Yours In Los Angeles,
Kilgore Trout
P.S.: Arrest Newt Gingrich !
Any type of game (and most types of complex activity more broadly speaking) is ultimately determined by the use of the brain's capabilities, be it the purely cerebral such as solving a puzzle or muscular coordination such as sport. Considering that children's games are ultimately training in areas such as team work, body-eye coordination, and strategic thinking for adult life it should come as no surprise that merely changing the playing field from a physical realm to a logical one doesn't necessarily change the gain. The type of game played does bias the type of brain activity triggered, for example turn-based strategic games heavily favour the logical thinking aspects but that's not different from a board game such as scrabble, merely the manner in which the stimulation is received changes. Even the seemingly useless video game arcade games are useful in training quick thinking, hand-eye coordination, and to a lesser extent strategic thinking .. can't say I've ever seen a 'dumb' person be good at any game.
The results aren't a surprise, that people would think games to be useless and of no benefit is more of a surprise.
Ever since I completed GTA4 there are times when I confuse driving in real life with the game.
but they don't seem to help with writing clever slashdot posts.
Exercising your reactions and hand-eye coordination actually increases your reaction and hand-eye coordination!
Genius.
Ever notice how the people who believe videogames rot the brain are consistently watching tv... often far longer than the criticized gamer has been playing. And the critic is exercising nothing, not critical thinking skills (only some games do this, though), not reactions, not hand-eye coordination. I say if you're going to sit in front of the tv for hours at a time, it's better for you to be playing a videogame.
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
What about pinball that has action without the violence of most Acton games?
I know that in the several life-n-death situations (usually with a car or near mountain-bike accident) that I am usually very calm and collected and VERY aware. Usually, after the near-death event, I realize how scary the situation was and have to pull over. Oh, and yes, I used to play a ton of video games.
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
I've been playing SPARK/ARC off and on for past 12 years and have definitely noticed an improvement in my reflexes
Try it yourself
It takes a bit of everything. Sure, your gaming experience helps you navigate a city in map space. But you still need to go outside and play. Or your fat ass is going to get run over by a cab trying to waddle across the intersection before the signal changes*.
* I saw one just the other day. Outside Microsoft's new officees in downtown Bellevue. Perhaps a great programmer. But no clue about the Big Red Hand and no ability to get out of the intersection quickly before almost getting mowed down.
Have gnu, will travel.
Seriously - nothing makes you more aware of *all* of your surroundings quite like having no defenses save your wits and reflexes. The idea of who would be "at fault" in an accident quickly becomes irrelevant, because you understand viscerally that it really doesn't matter in the end [if you value your life, anyway].
Those metal and fiber shells we lumber along in make us very complacent. The skills you learn from being exposed on a motorcycle will result in an immediate improvement in how you drive a car as well. And you'll find yourself wondering how [relatively] oblivious you were before that -- even those of you who are more aware of your surrounding than most.
Here's a quick test you can give yourself - do you look ahead to where you're going when you make a turn, or do you keep your primary focus parallel with your hood? Most people do the latter until they learn to ride, effectively preventing them from truly seeing potentially critical information in the path ahead -- if you don't believe me, just observe a few people doing it.
(I'd also recommend the standard motorcycle safety course - invaluable even if you have experience.)
Please come up with a study that tells me all the thousands of hours spent on fapping wasn't all in vain!
Unless you are a fighter pilot or a Ninja assassin, quick thinking isn't always the most helpful skill / strategy.
"Decide in haste / Repent at leisure"
"Twice measured / Once Cut"
I think we need a new emphasis on Ent-like pondering. Most of the most important problems that humans
collectively have to solve in this day and age have global and hundred-year-long consequences. Thinking
carelessly but having your solution proposal a day early is likely to be counter-productive.
We need to learn how to do some slow, considered, quality thinking about those kinds of things before
we act. We need to hang out with the problem, try out different conceptualizations of it and its context,
model and explore the scenarios, and then take a tentative and retractable step forward.
With thinking, it's quality, not quantity/speed, that counts.
(Holy crap! Is that a lion?)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I'm convinced video games give users superior hand-eye coordination which can dramatically reduce the risk of Car Accidents,
the NUMBER ONE killer of Teens.
Lets see the study people!!
in call of duty mw2. On the pc version of the game you pretty much need an aim bot to get your nuke. It's bullshit. And even if you actually get a kill it only takes a few seconds for someone else to hear the gunfire and kill you. I've seen at least three people kill each other in succession in the space of a few seconds. That game is so pointless.
In fact, it is detrimental behavior. Studies (find your own references, it's not hard to google) have shown that people who "multitask" think they are getting more done but in fact are less productive.
I have no doubt that certain types of games are beneficial, in moderation, just like anything else. I play RTSs, LoL, WoW, diabolo clones, flight sims, etc. with my young kids. They are able to use a PC from when they are about 2. I don't have a problem with us playing together for an hour or two per day, as long as they also do their schoolwork, chores, get their exercise in, and play normal kid games that require them to use their imagination. Works out for us.
The FA has an irremovable add that dimms the main page and cannot be removed. No scrollbars on Chrome. So, fuck that site.
My girlfriend plays second life all day every day, she is a fucking vegetable. Completely brain dead. Simple things like making a left or right turn is now a challenge. She is a total fucktard now.
Visit my Forums?
I remember seeing fliers for this study when I was a student at the University of Rochester (graduated in 2008). They definitely tried to make it sound as awesome as possible, getting paid to play video games. I think a lot of people signed up to do it; I did a questionnaire via email or something to see how well I fit the type of person they were looking for (plays games a lot - at the time I probably only played a couple hours a month, no surprise they didn't choose me).
Anyway interesting to see the results now, but I'm kind of surprised it took so long, unless this is a second study, or the first one didn't work out. I'm also a scientist and understand these things take time, but a lot of these studies are conducted by grad students in that department at UR and work on shorter time scales. I participated (and was paid a little bit) for several other studies in that department.
Ah, the days of copying programs from the back of a magazine.
Remember programming those TI calculators to play moon lander?
Slowly waving my hand - "This is not the sig you are looking for."
The article states that the study only tested 26 people and makes no mention of how or even if they were pre-screened. The article doesn't even say when or what questions were asked. A link to the source article or citation of some sort other than " Bavelier and her team" would have been nice to see what kind of credibility accompanies this study.
The type of games I play tend to be strategy-focused rather than acting out the details of in-game fights; I wonder if this helps my slower-speed (longer-term) strategizing and planning skills
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Excellent research done by the University of Rochester on this topic. Although it has been known for years that video games are very useful for learning and acquiring certain skill sets. The US Army had a video game expressly created to use as a trainer tool for soldiers. Video games have also been used to reenact combat situations for soldiers returning from combat as well. It does not surprise me that it would translate to other real world applications.
This study seems presumptuous.
... whatever narrow genre The Sims II falls into.
1) My wife, a statistician, gets irritated when studies say that they have proven things. When trying to draw conclusions from data you always run the risk that your data is not indicative of reality. You get around this with large sample sizes and by receiving data that points to the same trends on repeated studies. This study has a small sample size, 26 people total, and has no mention of repeated results.
2) The friendly article claims that the study has "proven" that action games train people to respond quickly and accurately. The article is overstepping the study in that the conclusion of the study was that people who play action games had the same level of accuracy as those who played The Sims II. The article should have said "quickly without losing accuracy".
3) The author of the study claimed that "People who play these action games make informed, better decisions than those who don't". The study only compared people playing two FPSs to people playing The Sims II. There is no mention of a control group that did not play any video game. The conclusion needs to be a bit more humble and only make statements between people who play FPSs and people who play
I frequently enjoy Alien Swarm. I played Portal and my wife and I are slowly meandering our way through Uru. I used to be hooked on Starcraft, Myth II, Myth, Master of Orion II, and others. I believe that these games have shaped my neurological development and given me advantages in problem solving, strategy, coping with unexpected setbacks, and more. I also believe that they've cost me in self-discipline, my attention span, humanity (desensitization to violence and beyond that enjoyment of violence). My point is that I want the conclusions of this study to be true to give some legitimacy to what is otherwise an unproductive diversion but the study feels a little shoddy.
Fast, low complexity decisions is what machines do well. Is it really productive to train our brains to do what machines already do better? Would it not be better to train our brains to generate the deeper insight that, so far anyway, computers have been unable to provide?
Are any of these video games able to measure the fitness of the person to drive car?
Lets say you play a video game a couple of times.
On the fourth time, you drink some alcohol... say enough put you at .01% BAC, or 1/8 of the usual .8% definition level for driving under the influence.
What game would be capable of measuring your impairment?
Well this question partly depends on having some supporting science that playing a video game is parallel in mental challenges to driving a car.
It would be one way to compare the real value of "Zero tolerance alcohol driving laws."
Sure, playing games might help you in some areas, but is this benefit great enough to justify giving up the opportunity to do other things? Furthermore, is this a temporary effect or will these improved skills be available to you when you say.. join the workforce. (If you play games as a kid.)
I dunno if they tested it, but I could imagine it's not realistic enough for your brain to make a connection to real-world decisions.
I didn't get into the TI as much as I should have. I started off with an early model Casio Sci-Calc and eventually moved to a TI-85 but I never really got into it as much as I just used it for school.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
In a study that uses two sample sizes which have very little statistical value (16 is the first statistically relivent sample size). They determined that respondants answered quicker to test questions and made wild asumptions about the results.
Does it really take a study to show this? I mean, it is almost intrinsically obvious. "If you work really hard with your brain, you will get smarter." Der... Thanks Einstein.
>>>Remember programming those TI calculators to play moon lander?
No because they cost more (~$300) than buying a Commodore computer (which is where my hard-saved allowance went)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I Just decided to buy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 after reading this. It's been a long time since I've bought any games after all...
but seriously, i totally know i'm going to get hit in the face(so your not going to blindside me), and in the video game i can dodge with my little finger, as apposed to twisting my hole body around all a'matrixy. i guess i saying that any task involving solely my little finger pressing the 'a' key i will pwn u.
Apparently I'm an anonymous coward. Hmm. Greetings to you too, Slashdot.
Anyway, this is certainly an interesting article - damned if I know what they mean by 'quick, accurate decisions'. Do they mean accurate as in more correct in a yes/no situation? Or accurate as in precise in a larger range of answers?
I do believe that games help to develop skills that can be utilised in reality - equally, I believe they create unpleasant social problems with overuse. But hey, that's alright, I was always a misanthropic r- but it goes far beyond just choosing who to snipe first in Counter-Strike. Problem solving, multitasking, resource management, oh yes. But these skills aren't game-specific: For every gravity puzzle in Half-Life 2, every construction choice in Starcraft, there would be another way to learn this, more efficiently and quickly.
And that's the thing. We could, but it wouldn't be fun any more. And that's why games win out over this: Because while you could go on a self-management course, learn how to navigate with a compass or do customer diplomacy training, you certainly wouldn't enjoy it and probably wouldn't learn much. Whereas games integrate such skills in such a manner that you can call on them again and again.
Although I'm not really sure what Canabalt teaches us. I'll come back to that.