Hey all. I work in the lab that published this (I'm in acknowledgments) and it's really interesting to read your comments. Some things I feel obligated (at 5am) to clear up:
-We're not funded by any gaming interests, that's silly.
-Next, thanks to BlightThePower, who got here first. He's on the ball and made a lot of important clarifications for those who haven't read the paper (you should).
-We used console or PC video game players with some fairly strict criteria. They typically played 4 times a week or much more for hours at a time on the type of 3D game we're interested in. Now, I play a lot of video games, but these guys put me to shame.
-As many of you noted, the type of video game is important, and we're working to determine what characteristics are required for the boost. We're also looking at other things you all mentioned: for example, do RPGs, strategy, etc. improve some measures of flexible overall intelligence? We're not looking at hearing now (people's sound systems vary quite a bit) but it holds similarly interesting questions. This line of research actually began as an offshoot from research with the congenitally deaf.
-Also, I can't stress enough we trained people who'd never played and they improved significantly (girls improved just as much). This is as close as we could reasonably get to the causal link many of you were looking for.
-For Anonymous Coward above, I hope you come back to this thread and change your mind. Please read the paper and some primary school arithmetic (like percentages). I don't understand your criticisms in that context, otherwise I'd give you a longer response. It's true that there's a lot of explanation missing: the reason is that Nature severely limits the space available to individual articles. Look for subsequent articles that go into more details about the individual experiments, as well as data from new experiments (we've done a lot more since submitting the paper coming out today). I can tell you that the researchers involved are both very bright and very ethical. The data that came out more than met their high standards.
-The press is all over it for the wrong reasons, that's true. You readers know the type of articles that have been written about the negative emotional/social effects. We wouldn't touch that with a 10' pole because it's not what we studied. General comment: Many of the studies are quite unconvincing, due to their methods (ever hear of random sampling or anything other than a correlation?). The others are interesting but we have no comment. I'd say that's a 15' pole, plus I'm not the paper's author, so I guess I'm safe.
-You can't say that you're a better driver because you play video games. You might also be overconfident or inconsiderate. You might do 10 things at once while driving and end up much worse than most people. The data are solid, but be careful what you interpret.
-To those who think it's too obvious to deserve publication... hmm. I think the effect has some cognitive implications besides "you just get better." There are some important things going on here that deserve to be looked at and Nature agreed. For example:
-Importance! 1. We think it's important as an measure of plasticity; high order functions rarely change in this fashion. 2. In addition, like Blight said, it's rare that any specific task can have more general effects.
-Finally, the importance of the effect isn't for most of the people reading this. Don't get carpal tunnel just to improve visual selective attention. Its most immediate benefits might be with lesion or TBI patients who need help regaining lost faculties (not playing MOHAA, but adapted training regimens, for example). But then again, the Army (to our knowledge) hasn't done research like this, and still uses video games to train soldiers. I'm sure some unforeseen benefits will come. For now, it provides some fresh directions for research.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey all.
I work in the lab that published this (I'm in acknowledgments) and it's really interesting to read your comments. Some things I feel obligated (at 5am) to clear up:
-We're not funded by any gaming interests, that's silly.
-Next, thanks to BlightThePower, who got here first. He's on the ball and made a lot of important clarifications for those who haven't read the paper (you should).
-We used console or PC video game players with some fairly strict criteria. They typically played 4 times a week or much more for hours at a time on the type of 3D game we're interested in. Now, I play a lot of video games, but these guys put me to shame.
-As many of you noted, the type of video game is important, and we're working to determine what characteristics are required for the boost. We're also looking at other things you all mentioned: for example, do RPGs, strategy, etc. improve some measures of flexible overall intelligence? We're not looking at hearing now (people's sound systems vary quite a bit) but it holds similarly interesting questions. This line of research actually began as an offshoot from research with the congenitally deaf.
-Also, I can't stress enough we trained people who'd never played and they improved significantly (girls improved just as much). This is as close as we could reasonably get to the causal link many of you were looking for.
-For Anonymous Coward above, I hope you come back to this thread and change your mind. Please read the paper and some primary school arithmetic (like percentages). I don't understand your criticisms in that context, otherwise I'd give you a longer response. It's true that there's a lot of explanation missing: the reason is that Nature severely limits the space available to individual articles. Look for subsequent articles that go into more details about the individual experiments, as well as data from new experiments (we've done a lot more since submitting the paper coming out today). I can tell you that the researchers involved are both very bright and very ethical. The data that came out more than met their high standards.
-The press is all over it for the wrong reasons, that's true. You readers know the type of articles that have been written about the negative emotional/social effects. We wouldn't touch that with a 10' pole because it's not what we studied. General comment: Many of the studies are quite unconvincing, due to their methods (ever hear of random sampling or anything other than a correlation?). The others are interesting but we have no comment. I'd say that's a 15' pole, plus I'm not the paper's author, so I guess I'm safe.
-You can't say that you're a better driver because you play video games. You might also be overconfident or inconsiderate. You might do 10 things at once while driving and end up much worse than most people. The data are solid, but be careful what you interpret.
-To those who think it's too obvious to deserve publication... hmm. I think the effect has some cognitive implications besides "you just get better." There are some important things going on here that deserve to be looked at and Nature agreed. For example:
-Importance! 1. We think it's important as an measure of plasticity; high order functions rarely change in this fashion. 2. In addition, like Blight said, it's rare that any specific task can have more general effects.
-Finally, the importance of the effect isn't for most of the people reading this. Don't get carpal tunnel just to improve visual selective attention. Its most immediate benefits might be with lesion or TBI patients who need help regaining lost faculties (not playing MOHAA, but adapted training regimens, for example). But then again, the Army (to our knowledge) hasn't done research like this, and still uses video games to train soldiers. I'm sure some unforeseen benefits will come. For now, it provides some fresh directions for research.