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Bejeweled Yields Cognitive Benefit In Older Adults
donniebaseball23 writes "PopCap Games and University of Massachusetts Amherst psychology researcher Susan K. Whitbourne, Ph.D. have released the results of a survey targeting the habits of older and younger gamers. Interestingly, PopCap's Bejeweled Blitz was found to be a good cognitive training tool for older adults. Of those who play Bejeweled Blitz on a regular basis, 47 percent of adults over 50 reported feeling 'sharper' while performing other tasks, and nearly 24 percent of adults over 65 felt that their pattern recognition improved. Dr. Whitbourne intends to conduct a series of studies looking into the value of gaming for older audiences."
It's nice to see some improvements in human health being made without the pushing of the drugs on the population!
There are other drugless ways to improve cognition in older adults:
- Get plenty of exercise.
At 80 you needn't be running marathons, but a nice hour long walk in the morning will do wonders for your health.
- Eat an organic & vegetarian (preferably vegan) diet.
You Are What You Eat. Skip the bacon and eggs at breakfast. Go for a delicious fruit smoothie made with organic raspberries & blueberries. For that necessary protein, toss some organic tofu in the blender as well.
Don't eat a big, fat lunch. Lunch is the least important meal of the day. Nibble on some organic fruit & granola.
Dinner? Go for it within reason. Just stay within the boundaries of organic vegan and you're good to go! A well fed mind is a cognitive mind.
- Get plenty of sleep.
This is important. Many older people sleep less than they did when in their 40's. You can sleep longer, don't worry. A relaxed mind is a cognitive mind.
- Get regular Chiropractic adjustments
Thousands of older patients swear by the life-saving miracle of Chiropractic. It eliminates health-draining subluxations, removes nerve blockages, and helps your bodies innate healing powers win any battle against infection or disease. A subluxation-free body leads to a cognitive mind.
- Avoid MDs
This is a given. Big Pharma doctors push expensive drugs rather than helping patients make lifestyle changes. Instead of the diet above they'd feed you cholesterol pills. Instead of exercise mentioend above they'd push blood pressure pills on you. A drug-free mind is a cognitive mind.
It's YOUR life, TAKE CONTROL!
Take care,
Bob.
Chiropractic Saves Lives!
Pattern Recognition is good? Why, isn't that often called "stereotyping", or "racism"??
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
They *felt* sharper? So what? Sometimes I *feel* like a dragon with a nine-foot penis. Doesn't mean I *am* one.
She doesn't seem to have a version of the study itself on her website, but I certainly hope the methodology is more rigorous than this makes it sound:
I am quite sure many Bejeweled Blitz players, if asked after playing some Bejeweled Blitz if their pattern recognition had improved, would tell you "yes". But a more interesting question is whether it had, in fact, improved.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They "felt" better at things they had "practice" with, which proves nothing. Call me when they show demonstrable improvement.
So what was the placebo in this study, twiddling your thumbs? :)
The total crap stories like this over the past few weeks has convinced me this place has jumped the shark, with a shark on a shark.
The latest Slashdot meme.
"Of those who play Bejeweled Blitz on a regular basis, 47 percent of adults over 50 reported feeling “sharper” while performing other tasks." So 53 percent of adults reported feeling less sharp while performing other tasks?
http://compsoc.man.ac.uk/~shep/
playing it for 3h per day instead of learning theoretical physics in the 3rd semester was actually good for me?
Um...maybe a scientific study would be interesting but the fact that they "felt" snappier is a completely useless measure unless we're just studying perceived cognitive ability.
It always amazes me how "psychologists" have to perform studies to state the obvious. Who would have thought exercising your brain yields positive results.
Video games help train your memory and coordination, we've known this since Mega Man. Attaching a title to this kind of obviousness is just product placement disguised as science.
Was it just sitting around doing nothing for the same amount of time?
Of course playing a pattern recognition game would make you feel more alert to patterns than just sitting there.
you are such a tool
So what was the placebo in this study, twiddling your thumbs? :)
Or was it, watching Sponge-Bob for 20 minutes?
If you want to play games to improve you cognitive abilities, play ones designed by neuroscientists.
For example, Posit Science has evidence that their games increase cognition. They are used in clinical settings to mitigate dementia, to combat schizophrenia, and to help recovery from traumatice brain injury.
One the fun meter, they're about a 3. On the "now where did I leave my car keys" meter, they're more like an 8.
I just felt a terrible disturbance in the googles, like thousands of furries cried out in joy and started flocking to slashdot.
imagine their disappointment at being thwarted. Delicious.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Just had job in to get a virus off and "get some pop game to work again" Got the virus off and fixed the game, which
turned out to be bejewelled. The customer was more happy about the game then getting the virus off...
Let's say this is true, that playing Bejeweled improves cognitive function in older adults.
Come on. It's Be-freakin'-jeweled. It's not exactly up there with calculating an integral or writing a SQL query. If anything, what this tells me is that most people are rock stupid and a simple matching game is enough to exercise and stimulate neural pathways in their brains. You want cognitive stimulation? Teach yourself complex analysis, or learn how to compose a concerto, or even (gasp!) learn Javascript!
Call me when it's something remotely scientific. Until then, this isn't any more promising than Brain Age.
(I find Bejeweled and its many, many clones thoroughly uninteresting. Peggle is alright, though.)
How about dual N-back training instead?
Here's a somewhat platform agnostic version of the game to play with.
And... there's the Dual N-Back FAQ.
Playing Tetris helps me stack moving vans and shopping bags. But put enough of these games together and maybe they help with enough kinds of pattern analysis to actually improve more complex tasks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/exercise.html
"If you think you're going to get smarter sitting in front of your computer or watching television, think again."
Scientists have been studying how to prevent cognitive decline for many years. For seniors, physical exercise is much more effective than any computer games.
yeah, and 96% of college professors believe they are above average teachers. asking people to self-report is not terribly accurate. Completely meaningless preliminary impression. Go to the real world and test improved (or unimproved) performance on memory tasks, although even that would not be what we really care about, which would be fending off memory decline and descent into Alzheimer's and the like, not able to recognize family or care for one's self.
From what I understand, having old people learn ANY new task will help their brains keep working well. I know the speech therapist my grandmother sees uses a lot of computer games for this purpose. This isn't to say exercise isn't important too, but you need to do something regularly with your brain. New things are better than well-honed tasks.
This is as opposed to the BBC and Dr. Adrian Owen's study that actually *Tested* people's abilities after using a brain-training game for several weeks and discovered that whilst you might get better at that game, it doesn't grant some sort of mental boost. When I get in the car in the morning and drive to work, I feel sharper when I arrive because I've been concentrating on the drive and it's got my brain up to speed. Does that mean that driving yields cognitive benefits?
"There are three schools of magic..."
....if psychology is even a science.
A 'scientific' survey that's measuring whether "feel sharper" or think they did better at something?
Um, all you're measuring is confidence levels, and/or the placebo effect. There's no data there about whether games actually DO anything.
-Styopa
Using your brain a bit increase cognitive function. Who knew right?
I am still in IT. I do programming (C, C++, QT) and find that one does not lose ability to reason. What one loses is scratchpad memory. That is, ability to remember 4+ things at a time.
It is by repetition that the learning embeds itself in my persistent memory. This natural phenomenon of poor scratchpad memory storage for seniors is a reason that many of us choose retirement. I am programming at an office, because staying home would lead to a big downer. I am not ready to go to McD's and solve the worlds problems with the other bench politicians, or go to religious institution for early morning prayers so as to socialize and keep busy.
I still have a life.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Any game that is based on doing this at a much faster pace slowly over time, will increase the person's dexterity and awareness and even cognitive conditioning for anticipating the next move to align yourself to be well positioned. ...you do not have to be old aged, or young, and it can be any game not just bejeweled.
I think they posted this story cuz it was a boring day, and raining probably where they were!
I wish those cognitively-challenged old people would just go away so that we could have their jobs. Keeping them sharper keeps the rest of us from getting work.
Do any other games yield the same effect? Because Bejeweled sucks.