Playing Video Games Has An Unexpected Effect On Kids' IQ, Says New Study (sciencealert.com) 106
Researchers have linked spending more time playing video games with a boost in intelligence in children, which goes some way to contradicting the narrative that gaming is bad for young minds. ScienceAlert reports: While the difference in cognitive abilities was a small one and isn't enough to show a causal relationship, it is enough to be notable -- and the study was careful to factor in variables including differences in genetics and the child's socio-economic background. Meanwhile, watching TV and using social media didn't seem to have a positive or negative effect on intelligence. The research should prove useful in the debate over how much screen time is suitable for young minds.
The researchers looked at screen time records for 9,855 kids in the ABCD Study, all in the US and aged 9 or 10. On average, the youngsters reported spending 2.5 hours a day watching TV or online videos, 1 hour playing video games, and half an hour socializing over the internet. Researchers then accessed data for more than 5,000 of those children two years later. Over the intervening period, those in the study who reported spending more time than the norm on video games saw an increase of 2.5 IQ points above the average rise. The IQ point increase was based on the kids' performance on tasks that included reading comprehension, visual-spatial processing, and a task focused on memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. The report notes that the study "only looked at children in the US and did not differentiate between video game types (mobile versus console games)."
The research has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The researchers looked at screen time records for 9,855 kids in the ABCD Study, all in the US and aged 9 or 10. On average, the youngsters reported spending 2.5 hours a day watching TV or online videos, 1 hour playing video games, and half an hour socializing over the internet. Researchers then accessed data for more than 5,000 of those children two years later. Over the intervening period, those in the study who reported spending more time than the norm on video games saw an increase of 2.5 IQ points above the average rise. The IQ point increase was based on the kids' performance on tasks that included reading comprehension, visual-spatial processing, and a task focused on memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. The report notes that the study "only looked at children in the US and did not differentiate between video game types (mobile versus console games)."
The research has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Indeed (Score:3, Interesting)
"While the difference in cognitive abilities was a small one and isn't enough to show a causal relationship, it is enough to be notable "
Yes, they are great in identifying trolls on a screen under a bridge from 100 yards away, a must for human evolution.
Re:Indeed (Score:5, Funny)
More like... (Score:2)
Playing with puzzles more makes you (slightly) better at playing with puzzles.
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In much the same way that IQ tests only measure your ability to take an IQ test.
Does playing video games make kids smarter, or are smarter kids more likely to play video games? I doubt they even understand the difference.
Re:Indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
I dunno - seems not unexpected to me. Two plausible explanations:
1. Kids who spend all day solving puzzles (even how best to get to a position where you can shoot someone else before they shoot you) are better at solving puzzles.
2. Kids of parents who can afford a games console are more likely to be able to afford a bed to sleep in, food to eat, and clothes to wear, making the kid have a more stable home life, which is already shown to be correlated with intelligence and school performance.
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Television is much more passive in that sense, but may activate other parts of the brai
Vindicated again! (Score:1)
I'm on a roll. Better late than never I guess. Beating Portal 1 & 2 will give your kids a solid 5 IQ points.
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Letting young children play games such as Portal or StarCraft is surely good for their mental capacities in many ways? But I assume so is chess from an early age.
That is reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems reasonable: Most games have elements of puzzles and/or tactics and I would expect playing more to correlate to being better at games and therefore puzzles and/or tactics which in turn correlates with having a high IQ.
Re:That is reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems reasonable: Most games have elements of puzzles and/or tactics and I would expect playing more to correlate to being better at games and therefore puzzles and/or tactics which in turn correlates with having a high IQ.
Which implies that, if you consider solving spatial puzzles as a trait of intelligence, then intelligence as measured by IQ can be trained.
Corollary: people from cultures where it is common to find puzzles of the types used in IQ tests will score as having higher average intelligence than those which do not. Which is something that has been said repeatedly about the interpretation of exactly what IQ tests measure.
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That is a known caveat in the testing methodology. Well, at least by those who understand what the tests are actually testing for and try to diversify the parts of the test, while also weighting the results according to given circumstances.
I'm always reminded of this fact when there was a Mensa truck outside of my university, where they did some screening tests for people with potential. It was a relatively short tests that was mo
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Having learned about the sequence in CS class, because it's an excellent example of how elegant recursive function calls can be
I... what?
To me, the basic recursive version (exponential time without more machinery!) is one of the least elegant solutions. But then again, I like linear algebra.
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I think we were taught another hand full of different methods, which were more efficient in terms of resource use, but all requires a bit more thinking from the programmer.
Anyway, at least most of the students that did the exercises were quite familiar quite with the sequence (some also thought it was cool to listen to that Tool Lateralus song), skew
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To me, the basic recursive version (exponential time without more machinery!) is one of the least elegant solutions. But then again, I like linear algebra.
Trivial recursion may not be desired in most popular languages, but it's closely related to Complete (aka Strong) Induction, which is one of the most important methods of mathematical proof in number theory. I could just as well posit that elegant languages are where recursion is elegant and effective, but I know I'm old.
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To me, the basic recursive version (exponential time without more machinery!) is one of the least elegant solutions.
The simple recursive definition:
fib 0 = 1
fib 1 = 1
fib n = fib (n - 2) + fib (n - 1)
... is an elegant definition, but not the most efficient or elegant evaluation strategy. However, this is also a simple recursive form:
fib n = fibs !! n where fibs = 1 : 1 : zipWith (+) fibs (tail fibs)
... and in a lazy-by-default language like Haskell it would be evaluated in linear time, not exponential, due to implicit memoization.
Of course the most efficient version would have to be the closed form:
fib n
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OH OK, fair. I thought you were talking about code, not the definition per-se.
However, this is also a simple recursive form:
Lol haskell! I am not used to reading that language and that took me minutes to parse. Got there in the end. Though I don't honestly understand your comment about linear/memoisation vs exponential. Zipwith is basically talk recursive, so linear time and tail is constant? I'd have to dig out my copy of Bird to be sure though. Very good explanation of how Hask
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Though I don't honestly understand your comment about linear/memoisation vs exponential. Zipwith is basically talk recursive, so linear time and tail is constant?
The reason the first version is exponential (in most languages, including Haskell) is that it evaluates "fib n" repeatedly. If you save the results (memoize) so that you only evaluate "fib n" once for each "n" then becomes linear (assuming the memoization itself is constant-time). The second version does this by arranging the results into the list "fibs" where the n-th element of the list is "fib n". In the expression "1 : 1 : zipWith (+) fibs (tail fibs)", the result of "zipWith" starts at index n = 2 whil
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Oh so internally, it's not pure like the code you write. It can modify to a limited extent, i.e. replacing the "unevaluated" marker with values. That marker presumably is invisible/inaccessible to code, and also the only thing it can modify in place?
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Yes, that's correct. The Haskell runtime works primarily through a "mutator" task (or tasks, in the multithreaded case) which replaces unevaluated thunks with their results as they are needed, "forcing" them to Weak Head Normal Form or WHNF—basically a known data constructor (head) with possibly-unevaluated fields. (Normal Form or NF would additionally have fields recursively evaluated to Normal Form.)
This process is invisible to the code, except that there are ways to make it happen early as a perfor
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Which implies that, if you consider solving spatial puzzles as a trait of intelligence, then intelligence as measured by IQ can be trained.
It is not clear whether the tests are just increasing IQ scores, or also the underlying intelligence. The value of IQ tests is in their predictive ability, in how well the person will succeed in learning and in real-life problem solving. If playing video games in high school leads to better academic achievement at university, then we could consider that a real gain in intelligence. Or maybe gaming has just taught them to be more persistent and conscientious. More data is needed.
Corollary: people from cultures where it is common to find puzzles of the types used in IQ tests will score as having higher average intelligence than those which do not.
And they may or may not rea
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It is not clear whether the tests are just increasing IQ scores, or also the underlying intelligence. The value of IQ tests is in their predictive ability, in how well the person will succeed in learning and in real-life problem solving. ... If they achieve as much as people from others cultures with the same IQ score, then the tests are valid.
The problem is arriving to a workable rational definition of "underlying intelligence".
IQ tests aim to be a proxy of that. But if you can be trained to solve its exercises better, someone who already has undergone some training will score higher than someone who hasn't, without this correlating to better learning and problem-solving in those individuals. That's a flaw in the test.
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I think we are saying the same thing, just with differing emphasis.
RE: IQ tests, video games, etc. (Score:2)
Any time you can encourage a person to think and do some kind of problem solving, you're helping them learn something. How useful the knowledge is outside of what they're specifically doing is clearly going to vary. But I'd say that even a kid playing Pac Man is learning some small things about estimating speed and distance to avoid a collision, and learning to predict movements based on previous characteristics. (The ghosts in the game all move about and react to the proximity of Pac Man a bit differently
Re: That is reasonable (Score:2)
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Yup, I would think it would also have a strong relationship to what types of games the kiddies are playing.
Just think.... text adventures like the original Zork vs. Animal Crossing or whatever....
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Maybe the kids with higher IQs finish their homework faster, therefore giving them more time to play videogames. IQ tests are also known to have a range of biases and some psychologists have a very negative view of them. Did they control for kids in the 'average or below' videogame group who spent a similar amount of time on paper-based puzzles?
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It follows that which selection of games played has a factor in the IQ boost provided.
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It's not just reasonable, it's totally unsurprising. To this day, every so often something will come up that will make me recall: "Oh, I first learned about that from playing Robot Odyssey." It's not common by any means, but a couple of times in my career I've actually had to implement something IRL that I first did in Robot Odyssey. Even somewhat more contemporary (But still pretty old.) games like Dangerous Waters or xPlane are mentally fulfilling and have found practical usage in my real life.
Imagine
Or⦠(Score:5, Interesting)
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Or maybe kids with a higher IQ would rather play something interactive on a screen instead of passively watching a screen.
Ironically, video games have a long way to go before surpassing the intellectual capability of any library.
That pin-drop environment ranks just above Monastery on the passive scale.
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Or maybe kids with a higher IQ would rather play something interactive on a screen instead of passively watching a screen.
Ironically, video games have a long way to go before surpassing the intellectual capability of any library.
Ironically, that doesn't in any way address the statement made. It's not the passive vs. active entertainment, it's the passive vs. active screen time. If I have a choice between watching a story or playing a game with a story I'd rather choose the more engaging option, and that's the one that's most immersive.
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There's seemingly types of learners with a tendency where passive information goes in one ear and goes out the other again, or goes in one eye and goes out the other eye (is that a saying?), having some interactive component that requires some active processing and application of the information presented, ought to lead to better information retention on average.
For a similar reason institutions of higher learning usually hand out certifications a
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Sure but good luck getting most kids to spend their free time there.
Re:Or (Score:2)
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Indeed. As far as I know you can never prove a causal relationship from an observational study. You need a controlled experiment for that (it's called science: an experiment allows to confirm or infirm an hypothesis). An observational study can only show correlation or the absence thereof, which is already a valuable piece of information to help form hypotheses.
Or it means that the causation that they're claiming in the study isn't the actual causation. remember drinking alcohol used be thought a primary cause of lung cancer. There are way too many variables to say that video games caused the increase. It could be anything up to and including that the different groups prefered different activities based on IQ.
Quick, lets get our NIS grant app in so we can study the IQ increases over time of children playing video games.
In other news (Score:2)
Smarter kids play videos games
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Huh.
I guess society as a whole has become so smart that addiction, is no longer something anyone worries about.
How convenient for video game makers.
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Why don't you go peddle the evils of alcohol instead? At least then you'd actually be bravely crusading against something that does actually ruin people's lives with real life physical addiction.
Oh wait, you probably see no problem with drinking, right? Turns out maybe you just have a problem with people enjoying something you don't?
Re: In other news (Score:2)
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Any form of escapism can be addictive.
And given this fact it's stupid to label gaming as "bad" when just as you've said any form of escapism can be addictive.
Tetris? (Score:3)
Yes. Shooters? No.
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Tetris will improve one type of reasoning, shooters will improve another. Shooter combat isn't so much on rails any more, enemies actually use squad tactics and react to your decisions (ever since Half Life or so) and you have to actually think. And what's more, it helps you learn to make decisions in the moment. You don't have leisure to sit back and ponder.
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Even when the AI is stupid (and thus enemies are usually made more numerous or powerful to compensate), there's still usually a puzzle element to finding ways to use the environment to exploit the AI's weaknesses. Such exploits are far less applicable to real combat, but they still offer a puzzle element that's far more intellectually stimulating than watching Star Trek re-runs.
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Yes. Shooters? No.
Tactical shooters can still benefit having to think really fast on your feet. But I would lean more toward Oxygen Not Included or Factorio for problem solving myself.
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Depends what you want to train:
- Tetris makes you a better mover
- Shooters could come in handy if you're in ukraine right now.
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A balance is key; I'd be willing to bet the smarter ones played several fundamentally different types of games instead of focusing hard on just one genre.
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Good shooters probably train your navigation skills and visual reflexes.
Now "movie games" that basically railroad you into a single track with mostly no challenge won't do you any good.
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I recently played a round of FPS games: AssaultCube has the most physics and the AI cheats. RedEclipse and Xonotic are both a 'stand there and shoot fast' game with eye-popping eye-candy. Playing AssaultCube means dealing with weapon recoil, new maps, small munition load-outs, no rear-view camera, impossibly bouncy targets, eject delay, covered-target difficulty. It requires more than 'run, see, shoot' hand-eye co-ordination: Winning requires practiced situational awareness.
Very dangerous (Score:4, Funny)
How can you rely on data, facts and logic when games are out there, right now, poisoning children's minds?
You know this is an extension of how Television makes children stop knowing what;'s real and what's not right?
A senior board member once proudly told me he doesn't let his kids use consoles because "it rots their minds".
Some games have options people that grew up without games really don't like...and I'm not talking about some "hot coffee" patch.
I believe this is all a result of D&D. It spread satanism in the youth of the time and they went on to create video games spreading satanism in children today.
My granny used to tell me that I'm gonna get stupid playing all them games and in her time she played with other kids outside in the mud with rocks and sticks. It's also "close to nature" - she insisted on this despite me showing her the forests of Ultima IV.
More IQ doesn't make you a better person. So what if the future is leaning heavily towards automation, robotics and programming. Those are not natural things...pretty sure nana would say that.
Just because you can play minecraft with your friends does not mean it's social. You have to be outside of the house with your friends to unlock the "social activity" trophy OK??
I once clocked 1000 hours on an MMORPG over a couple of years - when I realised how bad this was for me I stopped doing that and embraced working 70 hour weeks. I'm so much healthier now that I escaped the work of the devil.
Look I'm just saying take these computer games with a grain of anti-satanic salt. The devil is everywhere, tempting you to have fun. Stop having fun. Keep away from computer games before it's too late and you become irrecoverably addicted.
BTW, I'm funding a study to determine if listening to music promotes satanism, serila killing and teen pregnancies - I'm sure that rock n' roll stuff is bad for you!
Re: Very dangerous (Score:3)
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Jokes aside. All things in moderation. Going outside with your friends to the playground or cycling, football etc is very healthy and yes we live in a culture of fear despite being in likely the safest period for a kid to be outside.
A bit of computer gaming, a big of swings slides and tag. It's not so much the game its the implementation. Anti-social kids existed before computer games.
In the 80s I spent hours outside with kids my age; digging in the dirt, climbing trees, playing tag, hide and seek etc.
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Well that can actually be true. As in US it seems likely they will be kidnapped or shot. and there seems to be 8,1% in kids adhd. compared to eu countries that are (atleast subjectively) somewhat safer and we just put our kids outside and the percentage seems to be around 1%. some less some more. Or maybe they just dont need to be scared to death here of being shot at school. Maybe even a constant on of the "fight or flight" will become chronicle and turn in to adhd. Anyway seems more relaxed kids develop less adhd.
In america we also medicate the troublemakers. Do they have ADHD or are they merely badly behaved? There is no way to know for sure. It's probably cultural. United Statsian Culture is currently extremely toxic.
Re: Very dangerous (Score:5, Informative)
>As in US it seems likely they will be kidnapped or shot.
Not really. What is likely is that the very rare cases where that does happens will dominate the "news" cycle across the country for weeks or months afterward, giving everyone a grossly overblown impression of how serious the problem is. "If it bleeds it leads" and all that - nothing gets people riled up and willing to stick around through the commercial break like kids in danger.
Once upon a time if the problem didn't happen in your own neighborhood you probably wouldn't even hear about it. Now if it happens anywhere in a population of 330 million it's going to make prime time "news" for ages. And your brain will likely ascribe it just as much statistical significance as if it *had* happened in your own neighborhood, causing you to grossly overestimate the severity of the problem by many orders of magnitude.
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Just curious, are you saying school shootings are grossly overblown? I started trying to compare the US with other countries when it comes to school shootings, and there's almost no way to do it (make a comparison), the statistics are just completely wild.
I do agree that kids are pretty safe in general playing outside, the number of paedophiles just running around looking for kids to abduct is surely much lower than my wife imagines. I didn't think this through very much, there's no real point to this post.
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I'll admit school shootings are a weird special case, but still... yes. There are generally what, dozens of kids killed in a year? Maybe several dozen? Versus the many millions going to school? The risks are WAY higher that they'll die in a car crash or other accident. But those don't make national news.
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The "Stranger Danger" nonsense has really hurt a generation of kids.
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The "Stranger Danger" nonsense has really hurt a generation of kids.
yeah - that "Stranger Lady" that picked me up in her car when i was 14 sure taught me A LOT...
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Re: Very dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)
My favorite part of this is that it's actually much safer for kids to play outside now then when most of us were kids due to the drastically lower rate of crime. Try telling that to most people and you get looked at like you're flat out lying to them though.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It was educational, my good friend. That's where I learned that having sex turns both people into a single pulsating rectangle.
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Nice troll, I got halfway through it before I caught on.
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Thank you. I do this as a public service for geeks and nerds everywhere.
It's essentially SaaS. Sarcasm as a Service.
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Like Beatrix Potter showing wild animals wearing clothes, or a story about a magical hero giving a bullied girl (Cinderella) a night-out, because she's a nice person.
Like a dumb farmer (Jack) traveling via beanstalk to another land, then invading someone's house and stealing a goose.
All that social networking on smart phones has done more to stop teen pregnancies than centuries of Christian/Islamic slut-shaming combined. Facebook/Twitter/Instagram do bring their own demons to teens, the
So ... (Score:2)
... people who are better at symbol manipulation (which is essentially what IQ is, our ability to manipulate symbols) prefer playing video games as compared to people who are not so good at symbol manipulation.
Um, okay?
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Of course intelligence doesn't correlate well with wealth. Pretty much the only thing that *does* correlate well with wealth, is the wealth of your parents.
After you correct for inherited wealth, wealth distribution shows all the hallmark characteristics of random chance, with none of the population distribution characteristics that would be expected if it correlated with skill, effort, or any other measure of personal contribution.
The only way wealth is a measure of success, is if you define it as such.
Me
Except Fortnite and CS:GO (Score:2)
The study would likely find a 20 point drop in IQ.
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Nah, Fortnite lets you modify the environment and construct barriers and structures. You can be creative in setting up traps, pitfalls, and chokepoints, or other ways to give yourself an advantage on the battle field.
My nephews quickly learned the importance of situational awareness.
The Singapore method (Score:1, Interesting)
IQ (Score:2)
New media considered harmful. Turns out it's not. (Score:1)
TV used to be the target of criticism. When books became affordable to the masses, they were seen as harmful. Cinema caused a certain amount of concern in the 1930s.
Essentially they're all, at worst harmless, Most are actually positive. We respond well to stories. It's the primary way we communicate abstract concepts and ideas. Video games add an element of interactivity which increases our engag
Plenty of other things wrong with excessive gaming (Score:2)
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That depends greatly on what it's displacing.
If you play video games instead of engaging in physical activities or interacting with your peers, then yeah, it's likely to be a net negative.
If instead you play video games instead of watching TV or mindlessly browsing the internet for entertaining cat videos, it's more likely to be a net positive.
The one caveat is that modern video games tend to lean *hard* on dopamine reward loops to keep players engaged. Far harder than any real-world efforts are going to d
Correlation does not imply causation. (Score:2)
That's not the concern (Score:2)
Map reading and direction finding (Score:5, Interesting)
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Meh, those skills can improve with age, in which case, the gaming interest in the interim is just a confounder.
watch out in minecraft, roblox, and among us (Score:1)
Burying the lede (Score:2)
Practicing Problem Solving Makes You Smarter? (Score:2)
Practicing Problem Solving Makes You Smarter? Who would have thought.
It is more a function of the type of game. (Score:2)
At what cost? (Score:2)
Is a couple of hypothetical non-causally connected IQ points worth it?
My Gen-X is showing. I think spending the time fishing would be greater for personal growth. Of course, that only feeds my value set. But I'm in my early fifties and I have lots of money. My value set is clearly best.
Need the Krell test (Score:2)
In the film 'Forbidden Planet', a machine is shown that measures the power of a mind by direct means -- displacing an indicator upwards. Pretty cool. Until such time as such a culture-free and education-independent means to measure IQ exists, test results should be suspect. Any test I have encountered over the years was built up of elements that needed training to complete. And over a number of tests across a number of decades the 'number' has varied randomly across a 14 point range. Bad day? Who cares. I s
Even better (Score:2)
How much worse have they become at everything else (Score:1)
Proven (Score:2)
We'd like to thank them for sponsoring this study. Click here to find out more.
IQ boost: holding more in your head (Score:3)
To play video games at any level you need to be able to hold a couple of things in your head at once. The more complicated the game, the more stuff you need to keep in your head.
That's one of the things that differentiates smart people from other people, because a lot of what people call intelligence is really just memory. A bigger working memory = more IQ, all other things being equal.
Correlation? (Score:2)
Travel Broadens the Mind (Score:3)
That is the old saying anyways. And why is it so? Well it puts us into uncertain environments and makes us have to use skills to cope.
When you go to an environment that you have never been in, not only does it open your view and understanding of the world, it also fires off and creates more neurons that in turn make more connections that allow your mind to process more information faster.
Game are like traveling, you are constantly exposed to new environments, able to see and plan in uncertain areas. If you play Tetris or Red Dead Redemption II or Among Us, they are all actively engaging your mind to work while you play, which in turns makes you use and create new neurons.
Exposure to new things is what is vital.
Just More Crap Science—No Control Group (Score:2)
This is just more crap science because there was no control group. Doing actual science—with a control group—is hard. Doing crap science is easy, and it's all too easy to get it published.
poobah (Score:2)
undoubtedly bogus. small effect = randomness
Re (Score:1)
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What does this actually mean? "...the study was careful to factor in variables including differences in genetics and the child's socio-economic background."
Unless they explain how that was factored in it means that it's only useful to get another grant. Though I'd love to see the study that shows what the absolute gain on IQ is for being born to smart parents is, versus being wealthy. That could be fun to read,
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I don't know if that exact study ahs been done between those two comparisons but there is a building case of data that poverty and IQ scores are correlated.
Poor concentration: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life [princeton.edu]
Association of Child Poverty, Brain Development, and Academic Achievement [nih.gov]
Poverty is tied to structural differences in several areas of the brain associated with school readiness skills, with the largest influence observed among children from the poorest households. Re
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The two biggest contributors to your intelligence are:
- Genetics. As a rule, smarter parents have smarter kids.
- Family wealth. Higher quality food, medical care, and mentally stimulating activities as a young child will reliably increase your intelligence. Also exposure to environmental pollutants like lead, which tend to be much more common in the less expensive areas of town, and can have a devastating impact on intelligence.
Generally speaking, when a study says it factors in those variables it means