Originally published at: Kids who play video games at least three hours a day show "better cognitive performance" | Boing Boing
…
5 Likes
Interesting study, though I don’t find the results that surprising – probably because pattern recognition is such an important part of gaming.
12 Likes
This is probably a good time to remember that there is no single measure of “intelligence” or “cognitive performance” so there’s an awful lot riding on exactly what kind of tasks the researchers were having the gamers perform during testing.
25 Likes
Someone who isn’t too sick to read something technical, did they control for neurodiversity? Because ADHD and autism would probably both correlate with being smart as hell and playing videogames for as much time as possible.
5 Likes
I haven’t re-read the article, but if I remember correctly, they did not. The study didn’t allow for cause and effect analysis.
3 Likes
I pull my early teens off of the gaming rig after hours of play and sit them down to do some easy system of equations, essentially basic algebra. There’s not a lot of cognitive acuity displayed in those instances. I’m a parent who still thinks that too much gaming is gonna dumb you down.
2 Likes
What kind of games? If one must try to justify the joy of playing games by making them beneficial in some way (got to satisfy that old Puritan Work Ethic, after all), then it follows that different types of games are going to improve different functions of the brain.
Three hours of … improved skill?
Plants vs. Zombies – Planning, Strategy
Satisfactory – Optimization of Resources, long term planning, logistics
Portal – Spacial relations, Cynicism
… and so on.
One, than the other (take your pick of where to start), both, or neither. All of these answers at the same time. In short, mu.
2 Likes
so I should get our 5 month old a switch?
I at first read that as “swatch” and was confused.
4 Likes
Now, if only Cognitive Performance Test was an actual occupation. Please note the winky eye. 
And all those Chinese kids, slacking off not playing games…
Human life is too complex for this kind of study to do anything more than open up more questions.
Videogames are expensive, so children who have the opportunity to play them a lot are from better off families and get a lot of enrichment to their development, such as travel and museum visits, dinner table conversation, even just simply having more books and newspapers in their homes.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
