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Playing StarCraft Could Boost Your Cognitive Flexibility
First time accepted submitter briglass writes "Imagine being a total non-gamer and then suddenly playing an hour of StarCraft a day for almost two months. A new study of mine demonstrates that a group of female gaming novices (seriously novice, as in 0 to 1 hour of gaming per week novice) demonstrated increased cognitive flexibility after playing StarCraft, a sort of fast-paced chess on steroids. The control group played The Sims. It's been well known that video gaming can lead to psychological benefits, such as faster perceptual information processing after playing first-person shooter games. But this new study, published in PLOS ONE, shows that video gaming can also affect higher-level cognitive functions. The StarCraft game was customized to be adaptive and remain challenging as the newly minted gamers honed their skills, and in-game behavior was recorded to determine what aspects of StarCraft leads to the boost in flexibility."
...start making apps. An hour or more a day for a year. Tacks will start saying they are as sharp as you.
is in my opinion better and open source as well. http://wz2100.net/ - Graphics are a little dated but the gameplay is very addictive. I would say if the girls were tested with this game they would have been playing for longer than an hour per day ;)
Games have nothing to do with it. It seems rather self-evident that doing that involves learning something reasonably challenging for an hour a day for two months would boost cognitive flexibility.
...or that will undo all the cognitive gains you get from playing.
The dupe is in the first link of the article. It links back to this same page.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Possibly... but they are also neuroscience and psychology PhDs at UT Austin.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Unless you move to Korea. Then you get hot girls like this brother. Or maybe this
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Tests also revealed that hearing "Nuclear launch detected" when you're expecting to hear "Carrier has arrived" can be extremely demoralizing.
It turns out that playing video games on a regular basis trains you to be better at the skills those games demand.
It also turns out that some video games train valuable skills while still being fun, and other video games train you to be a vegetable.
News at 11.
Should go to: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201308/can-video-games-make-you-smart-or-least-more-flexible Thanks for the comments!
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"Those who quote others are more likely to one day be quoted" -Tom Planter
I doubt anyone who makes such a claim has ever seen high level fast-paced chess.
The first one links back to itself.
The third link (to the actual study) leads to server not found/broken page.
Like, so?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There were people with PhD's and other higher education who wanted, and did believe that Uri Geller had special powers.
That's a little off-topic, don't you think?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Considering Virginity is a binary state of being, it can't possibly "boost it". It just helps ensure that it never changes state from the default. :-)
OK. there was more than just the eyes that changed there. the "pre" photo looks like she is stoned.
Sooooo... you were BM and surprised he became BM in response?
I think the fact that I had to use a search engine to discover that this means "bad-mannered" is indicative of how hard it is to discover etiquette, especially for the Asperger demographic (like myself) that's attracted to computers in the first place.
Moreover, the implication that 6 pooling is not a valid strategy is subjective. [...] Try 6 pooling over and over again, btw, you'll quickly discover it takes some flair
In other words, when the cheese beats you, you should move with the cheese in order not to be a scrub.
Turning into?
Required reading for internet skeptics
But this new study, published in PLOS ONE, shows that video gaming can also affect higher-level cognitive functions.
do you really believe studies from a magazine that cant even spell it's own name right.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Just making a point that having a PhD doesn't mean the person is free from bias and a sceptic all the time. If they want to believe, they'll probably find evidence, just like the scientists who fell hook line and sinker for Uri Geller. The cynic in me tends to agree with what the OP said.
I imagine that if you played Chutes 'n' Ladders competitively, for time, you would get sharper in some ways, too.
It's all relative. Why did they study Starcraft, rather than Warcraft? (Or Everquest II, or...)
We've already made such observations with chimps.
Why is it surprising it works with women too?
Pick up a math or problem solving book and go through it! Seriously. I wasted so much time in my 20s playing Quake 3 and Starcraft, it isn't even funny. I was pretty good at it and quitting wasn't easy. What I would give to have that time back to actually do something productive.
Durr, I dunno AC, maybe the study wasn't about how playing Starcraft makes you good at Starcraft.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If playing Starcraft could boost your cognitive flexibility, then playing Zero-K could shoot it through the roof all the way to the moon and back.
So you're saying you're going to choose to disbelieve research that you don't want to believe in, on the basis of a purely hypothetical scenario for which there is no evidence?
Bravo.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
So you're saying you're going to choose to disbelieve research that you don't want to believe in, on the basis of a purely hypothetical scenario for which there is no evidence?
Bravo.
I believe he's saying that a single study that yields unlikely (IHHO) results deserves a healthy dose of skepticism.
Unlikely results with good controls and p>>0.05. So congrats on that argument from personal incredulity.
That's not what he actually said: "they want to believe, they'll probably find evidence, just like the scientists who fell hook line and sinker for Uri Geller".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Some geek finally figured out the best way to get a bunch of women to play video games while letting him study them doing so.
The scientists in the Geller case, Puthoff and Targ, were physicists and hence out of their fields when dealing with an illusionist. Geller circumvented their tests using sensory cues that any competent psychologist would have managed—they blocked peepholes inadequately and discussed the answer to problems within his hearing range, assuming wrongly that he would not figure out what they were discussing. Perhaps you are not aware, but high-profile physicists occasionally suffer from extreme hubris that makes them assume they know everything about the other sciences. Puthoff and Targ went on to become serious nutcases and were prone to suspense of disbelief; both did research into remote viewing, and Puthoff even joined the Church of Scientology briefly.
The claim that playing a game enhances certain skills is by no means extraordinary, and has been studied extensively in a large number of other genres, including non-video games. As it is inherently obvious that success in Starcraft requires the management of many units in different contexts under time-sensitive conditions, the hypothesis of this study should be something intuitive and plausible to anyone examining it.
While as a general adage it is important to accept and recognize that people with PhDs can occasionally do bad science, especially when they're out of their field, it's wildly inappropriate to insinuate or suggest that this study has any chance of falling into that bracket. The claims are not extraordinary and do not require extraordinary evidence to support.
Moreover, the study had mixed results: apparently both an underestimation of the work required to perform at The Sims 2 and an over-estimation of some of Starcraft's finer points. Given that, you really can't fault their testing methodology for indulging in wishful thinking.
So, basically, RTFA and save your cynicism for another headline.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
From what? Where you get to be if you spend 15 hours a day playing other video games? Great.
I'm not saying this is bad science, I'm just not convinced. I did RTFA, that must be a fairly standard platitude for someone who has nothing to criticise, but still disagrees.
One thing for sure is, playing a game will most probably make you better at playing that game. Cognitive flexibility, on the other hand, I think their definition and testing methodology for that is a little bit wanting. Nothing is mentioned about whether the participants were just learning how 'play' the testing. Like you are dealing with an area of study which says that you can't study for an IQ test, but people can and do, and improve their results.
You left out a word, I said "If they want to believe, they'll probably find evidence, just like the scientists who fell hook line and sinker for Uri Geller". I'm not dismissing the research; I don't know, and am not convinced, and I've played a lot of starcraft.
Unlikely results with good controls and p>>0.05. So congrats on that argument from personal incredulity.
It doesn't matter how good YOU think the controls are; it's still only a single study. Skepticism is still warranted on unlikely results.
Healthy skepticism, sure, insane "I absolutely refuse to believe this because it goes against my preconceived notions" is moronic. Video games and cognitive abilities have been related in the past. This, to my knowledge, is the first study that uses controls for different genres, but far from the first addressing the concept.
Healthy skepticism, sure, insane "I absolutely refuse to believe this because it goes against my preconceived notions" is moronic. Video games and cognitive abilities have been related in the past. This, to my knowledge, is the first study that uses controls for different genres, but far from the first addressing the concept.
I don't think your paraphrase is an accurate representation of the OP.
Apparently, self-deprecating humor is trolling now. Good stuff, Slashdot.