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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
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.
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
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...
"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!
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.
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.)
NetHack isn't an action based video game.
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?