Japanese Researcher Finds Gaming Stunts Brain 389
Bill Gates writes: "This story at the Guardian describes research done in Japan showing that playing video games in youth prevents development of the front lobe, leading to violent behavior." Turns out what at first appears to be arbitrary, mind-numbing violence may turn out to be just that. It seems this study might have returned different results, though, if it looked at the effects of video games which require lots of calculation instead.
Only on Slashdot... (Score:2, Insightful)
Which one do we believe?
Me? I'll believe whichever one I heard most recently. I'm gullible.
And people believe this ??? (Score:2, Insightful)
But I agree that video games stunt the brain in another sort of way, because peole who enjoy playing video games a lot think that LAN parties are the best way to use computers and a network.
Comparisons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Using the most sophisticated technology available, the level of brain activity was measured in hundreds of teenagers playing a Nintendo game and compared to the brain scans of other students doing a simple, repetitive arithmetical exercise. To the surprise of brain-mapping expert Professor Ryuta Kawashima and his team at Tohoku University in Japan, it was found that the computer game only stimulated activity in the parts of the brain associated with vision and movement.
In contrast, arithmetic stimulated brain activity in both the left and right hemispheres of the frontal lobe - the area of the brain most associated with learning, memory and emotion.
Ok, sounds fair enough. But what about compared to something like -television- that certainly many more children do for many more hours in their youth.
From the article, it sounds like they are saying video games prevent proper development, they don't cause damage. That would imply that something like TV would certainly do as much and more prevention than video games.
And television isn't mentioned at all, nor anything else. There are lots of things kids can do that don't involve any thinking...I don't know many kids that sit down and do math all day
Re:Impossible (Score:2, Insightful)
That just means you have nothing better to do. In my experience, 80% of a class can get A's--they just, in one way or another, choose not to.
Illogical conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, this article practices once of the major fallacies of statistics. They do a basic study of some Nintendo video game (they don't mention which one) versus continuously adding numbers or reading aloud. Then they draw the conclusion that:
"But the other thing is to ask them to play outside with other children and interact and to communicate with others as much as possible. This is how they will develop, retain their creativity and become good people."
Excuse me?!? The study had absolutely nothing to do with playing outside with other children. There's a chance that doing just that would be even worse for the childrens' frontal lobes. We don't know because the study said nothing about other behaviors, just playing a game & doing math.
If you ask me, this is nothing but inflammatory nonsense designed to generate a lot of press time and give people a good excuse to take away our fun.
What kind of study is this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Their conclusion? Games Bad : kids become dumb. WTF? How the hell can they make this kind of slippery slope argument?!
Why not they take a bunch of kids, and have them do NOTHING BUT MATH for a year, and see if the kids become super geniuses? Most likely they will just become (a) bored to the death (b) mad.
Children needs all kinds of stimulation so they can learn to become well-rounded human beings. Too much Computer Games is Bad. Too Much Math Is Bad. Too Much *insert thing here* is Bad.
(Begin Ad Hominem) Maybe the study's "need for funding" has something to do with such "controversial new result"? (End Ad Hominem)
junk science (Score:4, Insightful)
And any of this assumes that the study was done correctly. In fact, there are serious questions about normalization: very high activity in the visual and motor areas might simply have caused "normal" frontal lobe activity to be normalized away.
Between playing video games and watching television, I think kids are a lot better off playing video games.
Re:Another easy explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
I know kids with no hope of a social life, or even the smallest amount of self-esteem, whose entire lives are centered around being good at video games.
Take away the video games, and you're pulling the pin out of a grenade.
Accurate Study, Actually... (Score:1, Insightful)
Fun is not helpful to human development.
Wrestling, boxing, hitting a ball with a bat, trying to get a ball in a hoop, playing video games... all of these are FUN things for children to do, and it is definitely true that they do not stimulate human development in ways that reading, mathematics, and formal education do. However, if we replaced all of the enjoyable aspects of childrens' lives with constant education and forced intellectual stilumation and social interaction, the result would be a warped, tortured human being, who would be far more psychologically damaged than a child who played video games or did something else that they find enjoyable.
The methods and the data in this scientific study are very accurate, but the interpretation of the data is horribly flawed. They should have tested children who play sports and perform other enjoyable activities as well. They also should have disclosed what game the students were playing, because it is a fact that any child that plays Doom or similarly violent games always inevitably comes across story-laden RPGs, mentally challenging puzzle games, and other games that increase their mental capacity in a way that reading does not; through interactive problem solving activities.
And to complete the well-worn formula... (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed, Research Totally Invalid. (Score:4, Insightful)
Comparing to math is totally invalid. Most children do very little math, trying to avoid it as much as possible. It only exercises the whole mind because the mental exercise is novel. If doing simple arithmetic exercises made us better people mentally, then every cashier, who does tons of arithmetic exercises on the brain every day, should be a better person (mentally) than anyone else. The only other person who does more math (maybe not even) is a math professor.
Re:Okay, sure (Score:4, Insightful)
In places like Russia, they have practically zero cases of attention deficit disorder
Interesting. You use the fact that ADD doesn't exist outside of the US as proof of US culture turning kids into mindless zombies (Which I don't necessarily disagree with).
I use this fact as proof that ADD is bullshit.
Case study: My girlfriend was diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Ritalin because she had bad grades. As someone very close to her, I knew very well why she was getting bad grades. School was frankly, very boring. And not only was it boring, but she didn't care. The idea of doing menial drudge work instead of enjoying life wasn't very appealing.
Of course, you say "Well, all kids should love learning. If she finds it boring, she must have ADD!" Guess what? Public schools really are boring! Instead of say, making schools better, we're just prescribing more drugs.
I'm absolutely amazed by what I hear about kids learning in European public schools. If you ask most kids why they put up with such bullshit in the US, they say "Well, yeah, it's totally stupid. But I won't get into a good college if I don't go with it! And then where will I be?!"
We had a coworker come in from the UK (H1B Visa) who was a big South Park fan. We were discussing the episode where all of the kids started coming down with ADD. I mentioned that it was a big problem here. That shocked him. He thought that South Park had made ADD up. He had never heard of ADD until he visited the USA.
"For every kid who really needs Ritalin, you prescribe it to 500,000 kids who don't" -- Chef, South Park
As an aside, I'm suprised the pro-censorship movement is sticking to banning sex and smut and video games. Why don't they promise to eradicate NSYNC and Brittany Spears instead? If they pitched it the right way, I probably wouldn't even realize that I was supporting censorship. :)
Re:Okay, sure (Score:3, Insightful)
My girlfriend's point of view:
"Well, see, this is how a Russian mother treats a child who might have ADD. She takes the skin on her their thigh, and then she twists it. Several times. And then the kids don't have ADD anymore. Simple and very effective."
Child abuse is a terrible thing, but a small controlled application of pain can be a great problem solver.
Re:Gasp of surprise (not) (Score:3, Insightful)
"The restaurants of the future will be forced to feature illegible menus that cater to these Counter-Strike babies, adversely effecting the rest of us:
WTF!!! TEH CAMPIN LAMA RESTARANT/ MEUNU: DINNAR: WTF!!!
HAMBuRGR..... $5
COKA_COLA....2
FRENCH FIRES.... #1.50!!!!!!!!!!!
NO SHIT NO SHOES NO SERVAICE ! WTF!!! U FUKER/// IF U DONT LIKE OUR RULEZ U CAN GO SUK AN ASS U FAG
15 PRECENT GRADUTIAN INCLUDED!! WTF1111!!!!A"
In all seriousness, I don't think playing video games makes you stupid or anti-social. Playing video games excessively might do (probably does) these things. But doing most anything excessively often has such negative consequences. Studying physics 12 hours a day will make you stupid and anti-social. Sure, you'll know all about physics, but you're missing that key phrase "well-rounded."
Re:I forget who said it (Score:1, Insightful)
My experiences with games (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been playing computer games on and off since I was 4 (the first game I got really badly hooked on was Joust on my Atari 2600, back in 1984 or therabouts), so I like to think I'm reasonably well qualified to comment. I grew up with computer games all around me, first with my Ataris (2600 & 400), through Amigas (an A500 and an A1200) and far too many hours spent in arcades, and then into the PC world.
Do you know what? I really do think, looking back on it now, that computer games stunted my emotional and intellectual growth. Not because of anything insidious about the games themselves, not that they were necessarily ultra-violent (be fair, realistic ultra-violence in computer games has only been around since Doom or maybe Wolfenstein - certainly Doom was the first game that made me twitch uneasily when I shot someone), but because they were an addiction. Even when I didn't feel addicted, it was something I could easily slide into, and completely forget about more important things that I had to do. Much more effective at that than TV, because a good computer game involves your brain completely. TV programs just don't do that, no matter how good they are.
Case in point: I started learning to play the piano when I was 4. I made good progress to begin with, I didn't have much in the of distraction. It wasn't long, however, until I would find myself playing computer games instead, rather than practising my piano. Eventually, aged 8, my piano teacher gave up on me because I was making no progress at all. I rue that day now. To me, being able to play a musical instrument would be a far more useful skill to have than being able to set high scores (not that I could much even at the height of my gaming skills - I was always crap, despite my addiction - indeed, perhaps that's what fed it).
Case in point 2: girls and social skills. When everyone else was learning how to interact with each other, I was.... inside learning how to shoot stuff in Xenon II. When, aged 11, 12, 13, they were learning about the opposite sex, I was... inside learning how to play Civilisation. Now, I wasn't completely unaware of girls at the time - hormones start flowing around that age and there's nothing you can do about it. But because I was no good at interacting with people, hormonal urges turned into frustration, and frustration turned into anger. For me, that anger turned into anger at myself and self-hate, leading to a spiral of low self-esteem and depression that I have struggled to get out of ever since. I can understand how for some people that turns into outward violence, they just deal with the same problem in a different way. I don't think it's the games themselves that turn people violent, but the reaction to feeling excluded because they have been playing games instead of interacting with other humans.
Case in point 3: exams and university. I dropped out of uni because of games. Whilst everyone was going to lectures and tutorials, I was.... at home learning how to play Quake and Descent. I would beat myself up about not going in that day, but the feelings only lasted as long as it took to fire up Quake and start getting involved. Once I had done that, I was just too absorbed to remember what I ought to have been doing. Somehow I managed to struggle through my first year (my uni wasn't at all strict about people turning up) but it came to the end-of-year exams and... well inevitably I didn't get the marks. Out I went. That was the final straw for me. I descended into a living hell of depression and apathy for a year, but eventually I began to sort myself out. That year was also the year I realized where one of my biggest problems was - and I finally gave up serious gaming for good.
I don't think I'd mind so much if I actually learnt something about computers whilst gaming - but you don't. You learn what computer you should have, you get hold of it, you learn to boot it and you learn how to load a game. That's it. My computer knowledge only started really advancing past the 'point, click, play' stage once I gave up gaming. The fact that it develops hand/eye co-ordination is all very well, but there are plenty of other activities that develop those skills too, and don't involve cutting yourself off from humanity. Maybe a few hardcore gamers will go on to write their own games... but what about the 99% who don't?
I realise it's probably not very politically correct on Slashdot to point out some of the human and social problems with some types of computing, but that's the way it is. Computer gaming can easily lead to addiction (the games are designed to be addictive!), and unchecked, any addiction is very hazardous. The fact that it's an addiction that affects kids and teenagers more than anyone else, people who are at crucial points of social and intellectual development, only makes it all the more insidious.
Re:Agreed, Research Totally Invalid. (Score:2, Insightful)
To make the conclusion follow validly from the research, they'd have to use kids whose parents refused to allow them to play video games, and compare them to those who played games for several years, since they're trying to make a developmental point.
Also their brain activities should be compared while performing similar tasks, and their success rate/competency/accuracy at those tasks should also be compared.
Methinks these guys slept through the "social modeling" and statistical analysis classes...