It's true that some studies have shown certain video games can improve hand—eye coordination, problem-solving skills, and the mind's ability to process information. But too much video game playing may cause problems. It's hard to get enough active play and exercise if you're always inside playing video games. And without enough exercise, kids can become overweight.
Overdoing video games also could affect other important stuff, like friendships and how well a kid does in school.
And kids who play violent video games might act more aggressively. But here's the good news: Playing video games some of the time can be OK. Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York conducted a series of tests to gauge whether regular bouts of high-speed gaming could help to improve our cognitive abilities.
The researchers tested dozens of to year-olds who were not ordinarily video-gamers, splitting them into two groups. The first group were told to play adrenalin-packed action games such as Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament, in which participants dash around online arenas shooting each other. The second group were given The Sims 2, a more sedate, strategy-based game that mimics the pace of everyday life.
After 50 hours of playing, both groups were given a series of tests to see whether they could make quicker decisions. Scientists discovered that those who had trained on the action games made decisions 25 per cent faster than their counterparts. They also answered just as many questions correctly as their strategy game-playing peers. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference. The findings are significant because they suggest how some computer games — often vilified for turning people into couch potatoes — help players to develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them.
This benefit, researchers suggest in a forthcoming edition of Current Biology, has repercussions in the real world, such as improving our ability to multitask, drive, read small print and keep track of friends in a crowd. According to Ms Bavelier, people make decisions based on probabilities that they are constantly calculating and refining in their heads — a process scientists call probabilistic inference.
In a news release, the researchers expanded on their finding: "The problem is, the more they use the caudate nucleus, the less they use the hippocampus, and as a result the hippocampus loses cells and atrophies," adding that this could have "major implications" later in life.
West cautions, however, that more study is needed before concluding that playing action video games for long periods will ultimately cause these disorders, and more extensive, much longer-term research conducted over decades would be required to prove a link to Alzheimer's disease.
Andrew Przybylski of Oxford University is among the experimental psychologists who've cast doubt on these types of brain studies. Przybylski says he recognizes the importance of technology in our lives.
But if he was asked whether the research should be used to determine policy in the U. Nor would he use it to steer children to play one type of game versus another.
A key concern that arises from the findings is what they could mean for children and youth, West says. First-person shooter games are usually rated for people aged 17 and up. However, minors do play such games, West said, and that raises concerns. Relying on response learning means leaving in your brain in "autopilot" mode, West explained, instead of exercising the hippocampus by using your more conscious memory system.
West and Bohbot first established if subjects were response learners or spatial learners by having them run a virtual maze on a computer. Spatial learners were identified by their tendency to find their way via landmarks such as a rock, a tree or a mountain.
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