We will have heard everything about video games, both positive and negative. However, this latest study is in our favour. Let’s take advantage!
A new study from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Atlanta University in Georgia brings some good news for us players. We would indeed not be mindless bloodthirsty brutes since the study in question explains that video games improve our cognitive abilities.
It all starts with a personal story
The study is led by Timothy Jordan who explains that at the age of 5 he had very bad sight in one of his eyes. He would have been invited, as part of a study, to play video games to see if it could help him reduce his visual impairment. Obviously the result lived up to expectations since his practically blind eye became more efficient, allowing him to participate in new activities in his life.
It is from this very personal observation that the man wanted to demonstrate the cognitive benefits of video games. The researchers had a total of 47 participants for this study, all of whom were college-going students. Of the 47, 28 students were classified as frequent gamblers and the remaining 19 were classified as non-gamers. The scientists had everyone put into an MRI machine with a screen, where they had to track the movement of dots. These dots had directional movement and they had to press the left button if the dots were moving in that direction and the right button if they were moving the other way, they had to press no button if they weren’t. observed no directional movement.
A final result
Thanks to this study, the researchers were able to observe that frequent video game players were much faster and more accurate than non-gamers. Using brain scans, the researchers were able to infer that gamers had improved brain activity compared to non-gamers.
These findings indicate that video gaming potentially enhances several of the sensation, perception, and action-matching subprocesses to improve decision-making skills. These findings begin to shed light on how video gaming modifies the brain to improve task performance and their potential implications for increasing task-specific activity. This lack of speed-accuracy trade-off would indicate that video games are a good candidate for cognitive training with respect to decision-making.
This is great news for us players. We also remember this senior woman who explained that video games were great medicine for her brain.