Computer Game Improves Children's Hearing

wiredbeat2000 writes "The BBC is running a story that claims children who play video games increase their hearing skills. There have been several studies over the last few months extolling the virtues of games and education. For example, Wired News ran a roundup of college programs, and USA Today published a recent story on Daphne Bavelier's findings that playing games could help children develop hand-eye coordination, in addition to Professor James Gee's Slashdot-covered video transcript and article on 'games that teach'." Things have come a long way since the time when schoolkids were dumped in front of a computer and left to play Oregon Trail.

Sadly...

...Increased computer playing leads to fewer dates. Why don't they spend their money on a cure for this?

Oh joy

It's rather obvious that routine engagement with video games have both beneficial and harmful effects on children. The question that I have never seen made by any media outlet is how do these benefits and harms weigh against each other, and whether or not video game playing can be maintained while engaging in other activities such as sports and study.

Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see video games recieving positive media. And despite this, games such as Grand Theft Auto will forever serve as targets for the anti-game pundits.

Now excuse me while I look up secrets to the new Mario Golf game. [nintendo.com] I love video games that neither benefit nor harm you in any measurable way, only aim to entertain. This is why I hope Nintendo is still around when I have kids. I would much rather have my daughter playing "Animal Crossing 4: Happy Fun Land" than busting caps into pilots heads in "Grand Theft Aero 2: Jumbojet Bane".

Can't read or write or add or subtract..

But my hand-eye coordination and hearing are off the hook!

And to think, my parents thought video games would never get me anywhere in life.

Oregon Trail

You have killed 942 pounds of meat.

You can carry 100 pounds back to your wagon.

Re:Was I the only one....

Was I the only one that would leave dumb ass messages on my tomb stone so that other students in the computer lab would see them later?

Yes. Of the millions of children who have played Oregon Trail in school, including probably several hundred today still playing on ancient, creaky old Apple II's, you are the only one to leave so-called "Humourous" messages.

Damn, I wish I'd thought of that. My hat is off to you, Mao Che Minh. You truly are one of the cleverest children around.

Yeah sure...

...but since I played video games with the TV volume so loud in just negated the effects.

But not reading...

Sadly, while playing a SPECIFIC video game might increase hearing ability (I reference the BBC article the poster linked to) it seems abundantly clear that playing video games does not increase reading skills!

quote:

A simple computer game can dramatically improve children's listening skills by teaching them to distinguish between sounds, new research suggests.

The game is said to boost children's hearing by the equivalent of two years in just a few weeks.

Phonomena was devised by Professor David Moore at Oxford University as an aid for children with language problems.

Oh no!

children who play video games increase their hearing skills.

Just what we need, an entire generation of audio-philes who extol the value of gold plated, 3 inch thick monster cables and $4000 Blaupunkt stereo recievers.

5.1

This makes even more sense with surround sound coming into play in a lot of recent games. Kids concentrating on where the sound is coming from; do this for hours a day, every week, and soon enough their directional sound navigation (if you will) is increased.

Personal story

I know personally that what games did for me is not shown in any of this research. It helped me learn about computers. It began playing half-life with software rendering, and I began to research how i could make my game playing better. I then spent hundreds of hours learning about computers, and (thank$ to my very generou$ parent$) was able to build my own computer.

The point is, my learning (or desire for learning) never really stopped. I soon became a daily slashdot reader, and I wait for where my hunger for knowledge will take me next. I know this is perhaps not usal for many kids, but that's my story.

Unfortunately

This does not change the fact that kids only listen to what they want to hear

The Only Way To Learn

Hardly surprising. All children learn through play. When you make trial and error fun it's called play.
All animals are the same. Take a look at a kitten playing with a ball. They didn't evolve to please humans for being cute. That's a learned hunting skill.

That's one of the reasons why we have a pleasure sense. It propels us to learn and helps us survive.

Yup, all that extra hearing REALLY helps...

I remember when I used to be in Smile we would occasionally play different games other than tribes. One night, we were playing the raven shield demo and toying around with the different weapons.

Now, truth be told, all of us had our sound maxed out; you have to have it, the slightest sound can be the determining factor of weither you kill or get killed, no music allowed. Unfortunatly, one of the guys had a 5.1 surround sound system in his room cranked to the max (who I will refer to as "billy".). There was also another guy I was playing with whom I will call "Kiddy".

So, there I was, the match on the prison level just started, and I decided to throw a frag grenaide, max power, up at 45 degree angle to see how far it'd go. So I throw it, watch as the projectile moves off into the distance, then I hear this little pop.

About a half a second later over Teamspeak2 I hear another boom, considerably louder, fallowed by a "Ahh! HOOOLY SHIT!!!".

Of course, "kiddy" asked "what was it" and "billy" said "fuck, a grenaide blew up right next to my fucking head, arrgh". Subsequently, "Billy" was going up a flight of stairs, and the nade hit the upper platform right next to his head.

After that I heard something that made both of us laugh our asses off; "Brb guys, got to change my pants".

It's understandable; you've had a bit too much beer, don't want to goto the bathroom becuase of the addiction of the game, and at the beginning of the map you don't expect a nade to explode right next to your head, a minute 4 or 5 seconds after it started.

Of course, up until the point I left smile, "billy" never heard the end of it, hehee. >:)

Doh...

So that's why I'm deaf...

my parents didn't buy me enough video games! :-)

Not my kids

They seem unable to hear the phrase "8 straight hours of Bomberman is enough, its time for bed", no matter how loud I yell it.

here is the new scientist link

here is the new scientist link:

Computer game boosts children's' language skills [newscientist.com]

The game, based on distinguishing between sounds, is claimed to deliver the equivalent of two years improvement in just a few weeks

Hearing vs. Listening

That headline should probably read:

Computer Game Improves Children's

Listening

Since children are probably born with all of the physical hearing capabilities they will ever have, the video games would increase their ability to interpret the signals sent by their hardware (ears). In other words, they are capable of recognizing more sounds.

Games that I learned from and were fun

Here are some games I remember playing on the C64 that I learned something valueable from.

• Seven Cities of Gold (intro to Native American Civilization)
• Heart of Africa (a lot of geographical info about Africa)
• Summer Games (Good for learning different country national anthems)
• Alice in Wonderland (Encouraged me to read the book)
• Below the Root (A great game that doesn't need any violence to make the adventure really fun and read the book)
• Sim City (city planning, government, etc.)
• Strip Poker (Female Anatom.. er, uh I meant how to play poker)
• Great music got a lot of people interested and excited about music.

Speaking of learning things from computer games

Here [angelfire.com] is a funny list of things that you might learn from video games if you are an alien

This only means...

That they are not playing them loud enough. I played Silent Hill 3 a week ago and I still can't hear any sound over 10,000 Hz.

Don't worry about me, though. I broke out my Mark Lanegan CDs. It's gonna be okay.

Paid to state the obvious...

This just in: Participating in activities that involve repeatedly exercising action X tends to improve children's X abilities! I'm pretty sure I was tought this in high-school physiology and that it was one of the fundamental rules of development. It continues to amaze me that people are actually getting grants, paychecks, and royalties to document the obvious. What justification do the signers of these checks have to endorse such studies? Are there really people that out of touch with learning and physiology? Is there a great legal need for documented proof of such theorems? Is this some kind of academic circle of life where those signing the checks were once those recieving the checks and now feel compelled to continue the tradition?

Re:And for the deaf? Misleading headline

How old are your children? If they are all past the age of 5 when they started to develop hearing loss, then count yourself lucky.

By age 5, they will have learned how to speak well enough that they won't have any trouble picking up new words or even languages with hearing aids. Of course, that depends on the severity of the hearing loss. If they start to slip in their speech, then get them on speech therapy as early as you can. They would also have a good basic grasp of the English language and it's grammatical structure. Most deaf children struggle with this area.

Additionally, if you choose to get them fitted with hearing aids, then I highly recommend they get some musical training. Violin, piano, trumpet or even a recorder. Playing those instruments will help tune their hearing, for both tone and notes. This will help in their listening and speech skills. Let them play it through middle school, and it's their choice if they want to continue through high school.

I am deaf myself, though my situation differs from your children. I'm born with a severe-to-profound sensori-neural hearing loss, an approximately 95% hearing loss. With powerful hearing aids, I make the best use of my remaining hearing.

This is basically what my parents and I've done. Though, I got fitted for hearing aids at a VERY early age (1 1/2). My parents made the choice to put me on an oral education and they stuck with it. I didn't learn sign language until I met a few deaf students in high school. By then, my speech and writing skills were indistinguishable from that of a hearing teenager.

This is only my experience and what I grew up with. I count myself lucky that I even have any speech skills at all. This was only because of years and years of regular speech therapy, starting at age 5.

If you care enough about your children, they can be just as productive in society as a hearing person can.

Now, to be on topic with this slashdot discussion, I will say that video games has helped me, mostly in hand-eye coordination.

The first video game I played was Super Mario Brothers on the NES. I loved that game so much that I managed to learn the timings well enough to beat the game in one sitting (worlds 1 through 9). That hand-eye coordination has served me well in my touch typing and juggling skills.

A 24 year old deaf man says,
Sincerely,
-Cyc

Re:And for the deaf? Misleading headline

The severity of my deafness probably qualifies for cochlear implant sugery, but that's not the big issue there.

The big issue with cochlear implant surgery is when to get it.

At my age right now, it won't bring any additional benefits over hearing aids. I've worn hearing aids for almost my whole life that it's become natural for me to wear them. I'm used to hearing the sounds of the world through those digital ears and I'm doing just fine.

Cochlear implants have their biggest impacts at an early age, preferably before age 5. The key is being able to allow the child to hear some sounds before the language center of the brain stops its rapid development. The earlier the surgery, the better chance that the child will be able to have normal language development.

With that said, I wouldn't want one. I see no need to and I'm just fine with my hearing aids. It's likely that if I have deaf children, they too will not have cochlear implants.

I recommend you watch Sound and Fury [imdb.com], a PBS documentary about cochlear implants. It's a very well made documentary, presenting both sides of the debate with about as fair as one can get. It's a very moving piece.

-Cyc