Videogaming Keeps the Brain From Aging 255
Ant wrote to mention a Globe and Mail article stating that videogames keep the mind young and help in quick focusing on different tasks. "A body of research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. Just as people fluent in two languages learn to suppress one language while speaking the other, so too are gamers adept at shutting out distractions to swiftly switch attention between different tasks. A new study of 100 university undergraduates in Toronto has found that video gamers consistently outperform their non-playing peers in a series of tricky mental tests. If they also happened to be bilingual, they were unbeatable."
Exercise (Score:4, Interesting)
Well OK, games are often about solving problems and getting around situations which try to trick you.
I think real world exercises would be of equal benefit, assuming that the exposure is broad enough, but this at least confirms that simulations are a good way of training people, which has been understood in aerospace since the 1960's.
wish it worked for me. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually... (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe this is good, maybe not. If this is training people to move on and solve the problem, even though they understand that there is a problem with the validity of the sentence, then it is a good thing. On the other hand, if they are able to do better because don't even notice the problem, then maybe it's not so good. I've seen plenty of times where everyone's so focused on solving a problem that they don't realize they're solving the wrong problem.
Mental agility is a choice. Videogames help! (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally play a ton of video games still in my mid-thirties and support this wholeheartedly. The thing about video games, to me, is that they constantly challenge your mind.
I remember a gentlemene that was in his seventies telling me once that he kept mentally spry simply by reading, doing puzzles, and the like. He said that most adults are effectively senile early on because they quit reading and generally idle in front of TV. TV bores me; it doesn't challenge you to do much of anything except look, so I'd imagine that ANYONE who plays any kind of games requiring use of their brain would be a step up on people who don't.
Anyway ... I play to be playing games until I can't see and hear them anymore. Hopefully in my old age we'll have decent VR and can simply "plug in" ;)
Longer Mental Efficiency for Species (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if the type of game or level of difficulty have any effect either. I find today's games are a lot more complex than when I was young. Yet you still see young people able to master them. Perhaps this will enhance the effect due to the additional hand-eye coordination and problem solving skills needed to navigate in a modern first person shooter (where vertical/rotational perspective has to be tracked independently of actual character movement) vs. the simple side scrollers we started on (like Super Mario Bros).
Like the idea long ago that 65 years was very old age one would be lucky to make it to, perhaps someday the idea of the mentally feeble old man will be tossed as people stay sharp in mind far into their twilight years.
Interesting, although gamers already know this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cause or Selection? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
When you learn a second language, you are able to more easily identify the structural components of language (ie: grammar) when comparing the two side-by-side. A monolinguist will be more likely to assume that the grammar of his language is universal; a polylinguist will understand that grammar is subordinate to language.
Re:Interesting, although gamers already know this. (Score:4, Interesting)
Take my father, for example. He's been driving since he was in high-school, so I'm pretty sure he's caught onto that. He's got an IQ of like 140 or so, so he's no idiot.
Now, place a Playstation 1 controller in his hand and let him play a racing game. Pick an easy one with just the analog stick, brake and gas. (Yes, I've done this.)
The result is pathetic. He actively WANTS to play it. He asked for it. He repeatedly runs into the walls, forgets which controls are which (There's only 2!) and generally just fails at the game. He played for a few hours with the same results. He asked me like 3 or 4 times over the first hour or so what the controls were. (Admittedly, the last time was a confirmation, not a question.)
This is something any kid I can name would be able to do quite easily. He did not grow up with video games of any sort, and does not touch-type.
He's an amazing industrial engineer, but the simplest of video games eludes him. It's not the complicated UI, it's a thought-pattern he never developed. Maybe if he spent enough time at it, he could pick it up, but he never will. He's got too many things to do that are actually fun for him.
I think the study fails to recognize that there are thought-patterns associated with being a good gamer, but gamers definitely tend towards more agile thinking and better motor skills, at least for the hands.
Higher education actually helps gaming (Score:2, Interesting)
When I recently played Warcraft (haven't played it for three years or more) I've found out that I'm applying the stuff I've been studying. Particulary, using width-searching when I'm developing my home base. As a result, I'm beating the computer all the time and often even some of my hardcore-gaming friends.
Well, if I haven't entered university, I would be actually not playing games better. So, it's my education that's helping me play better and not vice-versa.
And about bilingual players: if your native language is not English and you know only one language it's kind of hard to be playing non-translated English games.
One more interesting fact: my native language is Russian, but while I was playing Doom 3 (in English) for the first time I found myself swearing in English. Was kind of funny when I found out.
Re:Longer Mental Efficiency for Species (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting, although gamers already know this. (Score:3, Interesting)
Learned behaviors are mental skills. Seems our brains are geared more for reacting to events around us than to ponderous analysis. This makes sense if you think about our evolution: Which is going to let you live longer to successfully breed, thinking about running away from the obvious danger, or just running and maybe thinking about it later.
Some suggest that we do actual thinking only to the point where we find a valid, working reaction. We then use that same reaction until it's obviously not working any longer, at which point we learn a new behavior. In other words, we react to events far more than we actually think about them. This explains many annoying things about human behavior.
Cheers.
also useful for stroke victims? (Score:3, Interesting)
On a serious note, I apparently had a minor strokelet a couple years ago that left me unable to understand the color red in the context of traffic lights, stop signs, tail lights, etc. Red means stop, of course, bear with me here. When I see red in any more or less urgent context involving driving a car, red is simply invisible.
I have to TELL myself, in words, what it means. I've got the tickets to show for this weirdly anecdotal condition, and I've learned to love my 2000 Honda Civic's ABS and V-Tek engine in consequence. That was then.
These days, several months after the worst of these episodes (it was never life-threatening, fortunately), my "red reflex" has rewired itself almost back to normal -- and the only major change in my lifestyle has been videogaming. Post hoc ergo propter hoc and all that jazz, Doc, but I think there's something to it.
Re:Or Maybe... (Score:3, Interesting)
coincidence != causality
God, if that is the state of students today... you have to unlearn them horoscopes and tarot cards and whatever else new age spirituality where they warp coincidences into something predestined. Somehow I don't feel so bad about our classes trying to hammer in "corrolation != causality" anymore.
Well, gaming may be an effect, then... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have ADD, I have a terrible time focusing my attention, but when I do, it locks on harder than a bell hop at a bunny club. In any case, I tend to play games for the exact reason that they give me something to focus on. Gaming really helps me to relax at the end of the day and gives me a bit of a break from the maelstrom of conflicting signals we encounter throughout our day to day lives. I'm guessing that I'm not the only one, and that many people with concentration issues are drawn to gaming as a kind of self-medication.
Gaming did wonders for me back in college, by the way. I was struggling to get by because of lack of focus—I couldn't pull myself together to get my work in on time—yet, the semester I finally started gaming (plodded my way through the Final Fantasy series, if anyone's interested), my work habbits shot up, my grades improved, and I started getting back on track. There were other reasons too, but I think I owe quite a lot of my improvement to daily gaming.
And Zelda... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the most intriguing part is where he reviewed about 5 minutes in the mind of someone playing Wind Waker. He litterally has to use up pages and pages of hierarchical lists to demonstrate the thought process, and then at the end says, "this is something like 1/100th of the entire game". Having played games in the series, I think he hit the nail on the head.
My only qualm with the book is that he originally had setout to do a book about video games, but then realized that his theories paralleled other entertainment mediums as well, and then devoted about 1/4 of the book on games. He didn't really dive into the psychology nearly as much as he could have; he could have easily written an entire book just using gaming, and it probably would have been a lot more informative.
I don't remember him talking much about GTA, except for trying to gently curb its negative media coverage towards the beginning of the book. I don't remember him really going into detail on it, though.
I suspect it's just that (Score:3, Interesting)
- that wolves, or for that matter insects, carry coins or pieces of armour, or that you can get a 6 ft two-handed sword as loot on a 1 ft rabbit
- but, conversely, things you'd expect each of them to have IRL, like meat on a pig, is equally a random drop and you might need to slaughter 20 pigs to get a pound of meat
- that shooting enemy planes leaves giant coins floating in the air, and you can collect them by ramming your airplane into them
- that the exact same armour piece, e.g., maille boots, fit a gnome or a half-giant equally well
- that, conversely, the "recipe" for frying a trout over a camp fire (you know, just stick it on a stick and hold it over the fire) works only on trout, and you have to buy a different "recipe" to fry a different kind of fish over a camp fire. Or that having learned to hold a sword by the handle doesn't also teach you how to hold a flanged mace by the non-flanged end, and you have to buy that skill separately. (Note that at this point we're not talking about using it well, or effectively. We're talking just being able to hold it at all.)
- that skills are only learned from trainers and you can't teach anything to another player (e.g., that if I'm a master swordsman and travelling for months with an archer, I couldn't possibly teach him to use a sword. He'll have to wait until he finds a proper weapon trainer for swords.)
- that, depending on your class, there are things you're physically unable to learn or wear. (E.g., if you're a hunter, you can't ever learn to even hold a mace or warhammer... although you already know how to use a sword or axe. And at least the axe is IRL literally the same kind of impact weapon, as medieval fighting styles went.)
- that smithing skill can be used to make a new sword or breastplate, but you can't possibly use the same skill to repair its edge or hammer the breastplate back into shape after it's been used in combat
- that the ingredients used and the type of item you end up with are completely unrelated. (E.g., that engineering headgear made out of medium leather in WoW counts as "cloth", so your mage can wear it, but you can't wear leather boots for example, although they're equally made of leather.)
- that things work differently during the cut scenes than in the actual game (e.g., that they couldn't use a Phoenix Dawn or spell to revive Aeris, although that's how it works the whole rest of the game. Or that the same handgun does 1% of your current HP in the actual game, but can kill or be threatening enough for a character to surrender in a cut scene.)
Etc, etc, etc.
Basically my take is that we gamers are so used to working with absurd rules, that we don't even really notice them any more. (Other than maybe for a quick smirk.) If a game sent you to pick apples from noses, the average gamer would just go and dutifully do just that. Sure. Why not? Compared to some other things I've done in games, that doesn't even start to disturb me.
Basically it's not that gamers can mentally turn off _any_ one aspect of a problem, to work on the others. It's just _this_ particular aspect which we've been beat upside the head with until it stopped bothering us. Yes, so gamers aren't bothered by absurd rules or sentences like "apples grow on noses", and can completely ignore the absurdity in that. No surprise there. But I'd be more interested if _other_ aspects of a problem can be mentally turned off by a gamer as well. My guess is that it might turn out to be a lot less natural to a gamer too.