Official News page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: ACTION GAMES BOOST DECISION MAKING

by Hazed

Scientists in America who have been researching the brain say that playing action video games makes people much better at making correct decisions quickly under time pressure. This potentially means they would be better as drivers, soldiers or surgeons.

"It's not the case that the action game players are trigger-happy and less accurate: They are just as accurate and also faster," says cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier. "Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference."

They came up with this fascinating conclusion by carrying out a study on people who had not played video games previously. The participants were split into two groups, one of which played action games (either Call of Duty 2 or Unreal Tournament) and the other played a relaxed strategy game (The Sims 2).

Then the participants were asked to perform tasks against the clock in which they had to look or listen, decide what was happening, and answer a simple question: for example, is an erratically-moving group of dots migrating left or right.

The action gamers were able to give answers significantly faster than the strategy group, with no loss of accuracy.

It would be interesting to know how lasting this effect is - do you have to keep on playing action games to benefit from the fast responses, and if so, how often?

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