Video Gamers See the World Differently 160
trendspotter points out this research from Duke University:
"Hours spent at the video gaming console not only train a player's hands to work the buttons on the controller, they probably also train the brain to make better and faster use of visual input, according to Duke University researchers (abstract). 'Gamers see the world differently,' said Greg Appelbaum, an assistant professor of psychiatry in the Duke School of Medicine. 'They are able to extract more information from a visual scene.' ... Each participant was run though a visual sensory memory task that flashed a circular arrangement of eight letters for just one-tenth of a second. After a delay ranging from 13 milliseconds to 2.5 seconds, an arrow appeared, pointing to one spot on the circle where a letter had been. Participants were asked to identify which letter had been in that spot. At every time interval, intensive players of action video games outperformed non-gamers in recalling the letter."
Shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shocking... (Score:5, Funny)
Breaking news: gamers better at playing games.
Exactly. I wonder how good they would be at identifying objects in a more natural environment. Drop a bunch of gamers off in the country, give them certain visual/memory tasks, and see if they perform better than a group of non-gamers.
"How many horses are standing in the shade under the tree?"
"Is the corn crib to the right or left of the barn?"
"What gauge shotgun is the farmer shooting at you with from his porch?
Re:Shocking... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, actually, a shotgun at that distance is more to scare off vegetable-stealing hobbits. It's not likely to hurt you badly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Shocking... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shocking... (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on ammo type, but here's a little table:
No. 2 - 330 yards
No. 4 - 286 yards
No. 6 - 242 yards
No. 7 1/2- 209 yards
No. 8 - 198 yards
Those does not take into account the "extreme maximum" range, but rather the common range for those shots. Even altitude can have a huge impact on range.
With No. 7 1/2, which is commonly used for trap shooting, one should have a safety range of 300 yards.
That is provided they use shots, and not slugs. Slugs have good accuracy to 70-80 yards, and are lethal at several times that distance.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a pretty good shot and I can hit a milk jug consistently at 300 yards. But that's a Winchester rifle and a lifetime of practice. I've made shots at 500 yards with a
Anyone hitting even a large, gamer-size target at 200 yards with a shotgun is pretty amazing. The best grouping ever recorded is just under an inch at 100 yards (.798 inches). And those groupings are from professional shooters with $4,000 gun
Re: (Score:2)
I see I forgot to mention those ranges are what you should consider dangerous. You would barely be able get a grouping the size of a barn from those ranges.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
I've shot myself (by accident) with a 410 shotgun at close range (blowing off my thumb in the process) and -- d'ya think? First person shooters where people get shot repeatedly and overrun a heath kit and are suddenly better (and didn't just die as their limbs and organs were blown off or perforated) aren't realistic?
Damn. Who knew?
I'm taking back my original copies of Duke Nukem and Doom, and trading them in for a realistic game like Mortal Combat or World of Warcraft.
Or let's rewrite all first person sh
Re:Shocking... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm taking back my original copies of Duke Nukem and Doom, and trading them in for a realistic game like Mortal Combat or World of Warcraft.
Oh come on. You can't play those games with only one thumb.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Well, actually, a shotgun at that distance is more to scare off vegetable-stealing hobbits. It's not likely to hurt you badly.
He needs to start getting some kills so he can upgrade that shit!
Re: (Score:2)
That would have made them the most powerful force in middle earth.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Sauron had nukes and biologicals and binary nerve gases, silly beanie. The only reason hobbits survived the first war at all is because their little hobbit holes double as fallout shelters and their immune systems were strong from walking around all of the time without shoes. Also, hobbits are very fond of mushrooms and other alkaloid-containing herbs and have evolved a remarkable resistance to toxins. Their powerfully detoxifying livers are roughly a third of their body weight, after a lifetime of quaf
Re: (Score:3)
quickscoping is just a glitch/artifact in the game and has no relevance to real-life firearm skill or any other skill. However, top COD players are able to recognize even one pixel out of place in a scene... their reflexes honed from many hours of battling against campers and snipers. This (ability to recognize something out of place quickly) can probably help in many real-world situations.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Breaking news: gamers better at playing games.
Exactly. I wonder how good they would be at identifying objects in a more natural environment. Drop a bunch of gamers off in the country, give them certain visual/memory tasks, and see if they perform better than a group of non-gamers.
"How many horses are standing in the shade under the tree?" "Is the corn crib to the right or left of the barn?" "What gauge shotgun is the farmer shooting at you with from his porch?
I'd start with something less technical like: "What is that green stuff covering the ground?" or "What is that large glowing object in the sky?"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They should be slightly better than the average person in spotting stuff in real life. You have to practice to get better, both in real life and in video games, and the "simulations" done in video games will help you improve your real life performance.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder to what extent their other senses suffer? Video games provide only visuals and usually stereo sound (rather than full 3D like the real world). No touch, no smell, no sense of balance, no feeling the wind, no g-forces.
Re: (Score:3)
I wonder to what extent their other senses suffer? Video games provide only visuals and usually stereo sound (rather than full 3D like the real world). No touch, no smell, no sense of balance, no feeling the wind, no g-forces.
I assume that they don't get any serious practice(and so would deeply underperform against perfumers, ninjas, sculptors, and glider pilots); but it's not as though everyone gets only 20 Sense Points to distribute across all their sensory stats, making it so bumping one stat requires degrading a different one.
FOX News: (Score:1)
I can believe this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I can believe this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They exclude people that don't match the results they want? Sounds like a pretty biased experiment. Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding this experiment? (Granted, it's already not a real random sample either, so it was already heading for statistical hell.)
Re: (Score:2)
It's actually pretty common. At my university it was participate in three experiments or write a paper. I actually tried, but It does make me wonder about the accuracy of these type of experiments. I mean, If students are forced to do a task where performance doesn't matter, why should they do their best. Especially if they're paying to be forced to do it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
very common. my school did this as well. your psy100 grade was automatically an F if you didn't participate in X number of experiments. no big deal, it was actually pretty fun.
They see the world? (Score:4, Funny)
Info extraction vs processing? (Score:1)
But is it permanent? (Score:5, Interesting)
The first few layers of the visual cortex are highly malleable. Wear a set of glasses that flip the world upside down (or angle the field of view by 10 degrees) and the system will adapt within a couple of days - the user will see the world as normal.
But also - when the user stops wearing the glasses the system quickly adapts back.
With all this fluidity, I suspect that a gamer's heightened sense of perception will dissipate if they stop playing games. At a guess this would probably take about 6 weeks.
Re: (Score:2)
The first few layers of the visual cortex are highly malleable. Wear a set of glasses that flip the world upside down (or angle the field of view by 10 degrees) and the system will adapt within a couple of days - the user will see the world as normal.
But also - when the user stops wearing the glasses the system quickly adapts back.
With all this fluidity, I suspect that a gamer's heightened sense of perception will dissipate if they stop playing games. At a guess this would probably take about 6 weeks.
If maybe the brain wasn't processing what you see. I doubt the eyes react quicker, it's probably the brain reacts quicker. Why? Because of the practice. So the skill could get rusty if you don't use it everyday, but it's possible that once you gain the skill, you use it.
So basically I don't agree with your assumption and me, not being an expert (but a long time gamer), I'm going with my assumption.
Re: But is it permanent? (Score:1)
My experience has taught me that if I do not play a shooter for some time, my ability to track fast moving targets decrease significantly. This is especially true for classical fast fps games like Unreal Tournament and Quake. I lose the ability to "see" the exact location of a player at the pixel level, reducing my overall accuracy.
This only applies to shooters though, and when outside in the woods I am rarely the first to spot an animal, so..
Re: (Score:2)
Want to know why? Because you cannot see the signs! As some posters have said before, "great you can spot a letter... but can you do X" I am outside in the forest with my dogs, have been for nearly 20 years. I can spot animals as quick or quicker than my dogs. It is something that you acquire, and I suck big time at video games. Not dissing video games, just saying that "great you can spot a letter", as for me , "great you can spot animals, where is my gun ;) "
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I am willing to bet that years of gaming will physically change the brain, to a degree that it will not quickly subside afterwards. Not unlike the cab drivers of London learning "The Knowledge". It has been proven that the hippocampus area of their brains actually grows to a much larger size than the average population. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/12/08/acquiring-the-knowledge-changes-the-brains-of-london-cab-drivers/ [discovermagazine.com]
In myself, being a gamer, I know that I usually surpass my none
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Those reactions are not directly transferable to body mechanics =)
Re: (Score:2)
The first few layers of the visual cortex are highly malleable. Wear a set of glasses that flip the world upside down (or angle the field of view by 10 degrees) and the system will adapt within a couple of days - the user will see the world as normal.
But also - when the user stops wearing the glasses the system quickly adapts back.
For _most_ people, the system will adapt backwards. But the reason the experiment was only performed once at the Univ of WA in the 1970s was because when the students first put on the glasses, their brains flipped the scenes within 48 hours.
But when they took them off, a couple student's brains didn't un-reverse for several weeks. I believe there was a lawsuit.
Re: (Score:2)
How people "think" isn't really a useful foundation for scientific testing. The window is only open for anecdotal subjective opinions.
That said, if there are differences I would guess that gamers have been trained to see systems. After playing through so many disparate scenarios governed by different rulesets, gamers have developed a habit of looking at a scenario, feeling out the borders, and identifying avenues for incremental optimizations in order to "beat" the game.
Whether this means finding that the R
chicken or egg (Score:5, Insightful)
Does gaming make you better at these tests or is it just that people that have these particular skills tend to gravitate to action video games?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how you could control for such an effect. When you sample from a self-selected group (i.e. gamers) you always risk sampling bias based on something that may cause people to select themselves into the group, which in this case is actually quite likely to be "being good at action-oriented video games" which translates largely to "having fast reflexes". AFAIK, there is no way to counteract this effect.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your question is valid, but the research doesn't appear to favor one of the answers - though it's clear which one will sell more ads. (Found myself replacing "papers" with "ads" there, how sad)
Although this is in the article: 'Appelbaum said that with time and experience, the gamer apparently gets better at doing this. "They need less information to arrive at a probabilistic conclusion, and they do it faster."' And of course you could actually determine this by looking at how long and how much people have b
Be a better driver. (Score:1)
When I was a busy salesman driving around my city I used FPSs to keep my reaction times low and situational awareness sharp. Where I live the traffic is the worst/deadliest in our area so I felt like I needed something to give me an advantage. I drove on this route for six years and 35,000 miles without a ticket or accident. Not that I didn't come close a few times.
Re:Be a better driver. (Score:4, Funny)
I drive at full throttle at all times, lane splitting on the median and using only the handbrake for those times I need to round sharp corners. I run over hundreds of pedestrians, most of whom get right back up and simply curse at me. When the cops come, I drive outside their search radius and they call it off.
Vidya games have taught me well.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, fine, but how many people did you kill with your car mounted laser cannons?
Not the first study of this sort (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
There's been other similar prior work. For example, there's evidence that gamers can quickly allocate their attention in an efficient fashion. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680769/ [nih.gov] and that gamers have faster reaction times for a large variety of tasks http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/18/6/321.short [sagepub.com].
Indeed, I'd have modded you up if I'd have mod points.
This study is yet another one showing these effects, but is by far not the first. The effects of video-game playing, in particular action video-game playing, on various part of the decision making process have been studied extensively. The whole research was kicked off by the publication of
Green, C.S. & Bavelier, D. (2003). Action video games modify visual selective attention [unige.ch]. Nature, 423, 534-537
with more publications related to that topic av
Re: (Score:3)
There's been other similar prior work. For example, there's evidence that gamers can quickly allocate their attention in an efficient fashion. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680769/ [nih.gov] and that gamers have faster reaction times for a large variety of tasks http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/18/6/321.short [sagepub.com].
No, no, no.
We all know that gaming is the work of the devil and teaches our chillin' nothing good.
Both Fox News and the Pastor told me so.
This "research" must be suppressed.
Retinal fixation point (Score:2)
Gamers have the benefit of using the natural fixation point of our retinas in an enhanced way (or rather in a more methodical fashion); "focus" as abstract as that means in cogni
oh yeah? (Score:2)
Relation to other theories (Score:1)
Interestingly, the researchers also noted that, despite the lack of anonymity, gamers exhibited a higher rate of verbal abuse of other participants who failed to complete the given task successfully. This rate was shown to be independent of the gamer's biological age, ethnicity and social class, but a correlation appeared when plotted against the gamer's online age. The rate of abuse also increased as the gamers became more confident in their ability to outperform other participants.
The researchers have the
I have known this for over 25 years (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I just rush through the crowd, pushing everyone aside, Ezio style.
It causes bad drivers (Score:2)
It causes bad drivers.
The place I see this effect is driving home from the AMC 20 in Santa Clara on 101, and the idiots in the rice rockets who (A) thing they are playing a video game, (B) think that video game physics perfectly mirror reality, so things that work there work in the meat word, and (C) think everyone else drives the same way they do, so it's OK to drive that way because the only people who will get in accidents are the people who don't play the game as well as they play it.
Personally, If I we
Re: (Score:3)
You're missing a much more fundamental possible cause of the behavior. By and large, the drivers of rice rockets are late teens/early 20s males. Late teens/early 20s males have a couple things going on:
A) They engage in experience seeking, risk taking behaviors at a much, MUCH higher rate. The causal link between that and testosterone is the popular theory, scientifically it's still up in the air as far as I know, but I haven't really b
Re: (Score:2)
Gamers don't cause bad drivers. GPU manufacturers cause bad drivers.
Without good drivers they'll crash.
We are talking 'bout the same thing, right?
Re: (Score:3)
You really have no idea what you're talking about. Before video games, the idiots in the rice rockets were idiots in muscle cars. And before muscle cars the idiots were in hot rods. Before that, you had people who would whip their horses into a froth and pull their surrey too fast. (They even optionally had fringe on the top; compare and contrast "dingle balls")
Video games can improve driving skills. Gran Turismo did for me. It made me a smoother driver even around the speed limits.
...and despite all the benefits I wonder (Score:1)
I have a nephew who is a classic example of the video game addicted kid... only he's not a kid any more. Sure, he's got the boost in hand-eye coordination, but where does it benefit his life? He might have a career in operating drones in the future..."securing our freedom?" But his unending focus on non-productive, non-valuable sense of achievement [unlocked!] had literally interfered with his development as a person. He is/was a truly sharp person but we just can't tear him away from his gaming.
And lik
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think you're seeing a gaming problem there. I've seen the same escaping-reality behavior with books and television. If your life isn't particularly rewarding or interesting, you'll seek it out somewhere else. You say he's seeking out a non-valuable sense of achievement, but has anyone ever provided him a particularly valuable one? The endemic problem you think you've identified might have more of a basis with our society
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a gaming enthusiast, but I'm not going to prop up gaming on a pedestal as a particularly virtuous use of my time (though no less than the vast majority of hobbies).
Games are designed to reward players with hooks to provide constant entertainment triggers. Real life simply is not designed to reward you as frequently and consistently as games. Many of the real-world achievements that we respect involve long arduous stretches of little or no return for time invested.
The key lesson for young gamers is that
Re: (Score:2)
But his unending focus on non-productive, non-valuable sense of achievement [unlocked!] had literally interfered with his development as a person.
For a second there, I thought you were talking about an insurance salesman. The simple truth is that most of our jobs are not useful. They amount to behaving like decapitated poultry, or as some sort of gatekeeper.
Re: (Score:1)
With that in mind. You have to understand that some of us do get benefit out of gaming, even though you don't.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I have a nephew who is a classic example of the video game addicted kid... only he's not a kid any more. Sure, he's got the boost in hand-eye coordination, but where does it benefit his life?
I have friend who is an alcoholic. That doesn't mean everyone who drinks wine is a loser.
An anecdote or single example is not a statistic, much less a trend.
How much better off would your nephew be if he didn't play games but merely watched Reality TV shows and Justin Bieber concerts?
There are many different ways to be a loser.
And there are many different skills in the world.
I'd rather have arthroscopic surgery done by a doc who is also a gamer than one who isn't and doesn't have the hand-eye coordin
Causality (Score:1)
Assassin's Creed (Score:1)
I know I see the world differently.
After playing through the first Assassin's Creed game, I'd find myself looking up at tall buildings, churches, etc. working out the best path to take for climbing up to the roof.
Never actually attempted to climb to the roof of any building - probably for the best; I hate heights.
So what do you LOSE? (Score:2)
Since we've finally moved past the old "you only use 10% of your brain" canard, it seems plausible that the neural paths reinforced by/for tasks like this would otherwise have been doing something else. I wonder if there are tasks where these gamers perform significantly worse than non-gamers? If there are, are the deficits consistent, or do different brains lose different things?
How serious gamers play baseball. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Looks like the gamers know what the letter has been in some spot a few milli seconds later. It probably explains why gamers playing real baseball with real bats seem to be hitting where the ball had been a few milliseconds instead of where the ball is now.
Are you talking about video gamers who have never played baseball?
If so, then compare their abilities to no-gamers who have never played baseball. Everyone starts by swinging too late.
Compare apples to apples. Don't compare pros to specific types of n00bs and then believe it tells you anything about anything.
Weed and caffeine (Score:2)
So this could just be attributed to lots of weed and caffeine?
Duke Nukem... (Score:1)
VG Advantages Go Much Further Than Visual (Score:2)
With that said,
Re: (Score:2)
Agree completely. I used to be a gaming addict back in the university days, mainly counterstrike and racing games, and these skills once almost saved my life. Driving to my parents house, we were on a busy road when the car in front of me had a collision and spun around. I could immediately respond, and avoided hitting it myself. My brother that was with me in the car was terrified, and didn't even realize what happened until we stood still much further. I am sure the gaming made the difference between an a
Re:Faster isn't better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Faster isn't better (Score:5, Funny)
There's nothing preventing a video game player from playing in sports and having adequate physical activity. After all, even extreme athletes know there is a rest period.
Yes, but do extreme gamers know that?
Re: Faster isn't better (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
True, but the reality is otherwise. To become really good at a video game means sitting in front of the video game. To become really good at athletics means actually going out and doing it. An athlete will not play video games in their rest period, because it is REST! I used to windsurf about 4 to 5 hours a day while still being in school. The last thing I wanted to do was play video games during my rest time. Video games are not resting, unless you are talking casual games, but I doubt casual gamers (like
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that professional athletes play video games. They have a lot of downtime.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Faster isn't better (Score:4)
We are out there
Re: (Score:3)
Slightly faster reactions to a visual input is a poor tradeoff for reduced person to person social interaction and physical activity.
I dunno... this kind of skill could pay off big when the aliens take over and put us all to work at "spot the letter", to generate energy for their [technobabble].
Re: (Score:2)
Who decides that it's a poor tradeoff? That's absolutely subjective.
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong... Here is the issue. If you have a faster reaction time and play video games you tend to be more "jumpy". I don't mean this in a bad way. I mean you tend to be faster than other folks. THUS what ends up happening is that you drive faster, and the advantage you have in reaction gets nullified since you are driving faster. I am not saying you are a hazard. I am saying things balance out.
Re:Must terminate... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Must terminate... (Score:5, Funny)
They should make it so the first post cannot be anonymous.
It should come with a first post pre attached.