By Joel Smart (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: May 23, 2012
You’ll have to blame your inability to read your shiny, new textbooks on something other than your latest gaming addiction. A recent study, published in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, has shown that video games have the capability to improve your mind. “A team led by psychology professor Ian Spence at the University of Toronto reveals that playing an action video game, even for a relatively short time, causes differences in brain activity and improvements in visual attention,” explained a Science Daily report.
The subjects were to play Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, a first-person-shooter, for 10 hours, and then complete a mentally-challenging focus test while their brain waves were recorded. “After playing the shooter game, the changes in electrical activity were consistent with brain processes that enhance visual attention and supress distracting information,” Sijing Wu, a PhD student at the University of Toronto and author of the study, told Science Daily.
While it isn’t a new finding that action video games improve “selective visual attention,” the study sought to provide a causal link by ensuring all 25 subjects studied had not previously played a video game. “Nobody has previously demonstrated that there are differences in brain activity which are a direct result of playing the video game,” said Ian Spence, the psychology professor who led the team, in the Science Daily report. The control group, which played Ballance, an action-free 3-D puzzle game, did not show the improvements in their brainwaves.
The findings are significant, specifically considering the various every day activities that rely on visual perception and attention. According to the research, these activities range from driving a car to safely navigating through a messy room. Because of the similarity to driving, Wu saw the potential for video games to help. For example, he told The Toronto Star in an interview that the findings could be used to “develop training programs to help older drivers” who are struggling to maintain the required levels of awareness. Or, if you just convince your grandma to play a round of Call of Duty with you before she heads off to the supermarket, she might actually keep the speed limit for once. Just don’t complain to us when she starts calling you a n00b.
Wu also challenged critics of video games to stop focusing only on the negative sides of games. “Before this trend of research started, people always focused on the violent side of the first person shooter games,” he told The Toronto Star. While he added that violent games are not good for children, he noted that there are positive aspects to these games, and that further research could help bring those aspects to games appropriate for kids.
The potential for games to bring about positive changes has been lauded for years. While they’ve successfully been used to teach typing, they’ve struggled to gain momentum in math and English based teaching games. Games even have the potential to help people better retain certain important activities, such as emergency protocols; for example, one Gamasutra article suggested using a game instead of the airline attendant demonstration to prepare passengers in the event of a crash. It’s already well-known that the military uses a specially-designed first-person-shooter game to train their soldiers. It likely won’t be long before the DMV includes a driving simulator test before it sends L drivers out on the road.
While crosswords and word jumble games have long been seen as positive force for keeping an aging mind mentally fit, it may surprise some to see modern action video games added to the list. Ah, excuses to play your favourite game have never been so sweet.
