Action video games improve brain function more than so-called ‘brain games’
psypost.org
psypost.org
edit: and you get good at those by playing and practicing that one game for thousands of hours
It should be mentioned that the article is a review article and doesn't provide any actual head-to-head comparisons between "action video games" and "brain games." In addition, one of the authors (Aaron Seitz) developed a cognitive training program (Ultimeyes) that is much more like a "brain game" than an "action video game"
A summary from the article than its title is "A new article argues that it is the specific content, dynamics, and mechanics of individual games that determine their effects on the brain and that action video games might have particularly positive benefits."
That is to say: I suspect the "penalty" of getting "killed" in a humiliating fashion thus thwarting a goal is more of a motivation than the reward of hearing a voice say, "good job for memorizing that numerical pattern."
They play to compete in something they consider "cool". And competing without the possibility of losing is pointless.
This is the RSA Animate of Dan Pink's lecture on motivation. He suggests there is a division between physical and mental tasks. This was tested with several experiments involving different reward schemes.
As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they
would be expected. The higher the pay, the better the performance.
[...]
Once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward
led to poorer performance.
The idea that penalties trump rewards probably explains why I've always liked roguelike games (and Touhou-style shooters). I've been playing way too much Nuclear Throne recently (and Risk Of Rain). As a roguelite, it strongly embraces the idea of "permadeath". Robotron/SmashTV style extra-fast action, that where you can never make a mistake (a single hit can end the game).
Also, Nuclear Throne demonstrates an important implementation detail in something that uses such a strong punishment-based motivator: never put anything in the way of the player restarting after their mistakes. In NT, once the death animation has played (only a few frames, at most 200-300ms), you can hit "R" to restart the game at the first level. No delay whatsoever. Sure, the penalty is harsh, but you can try to overcome that failure immediately.
Is there a stigma associated with violent video games? Of course. No academic institutions are funding developmental psychology research into violent video games the way they fund the study of educational games. This is despite violent video games being way more appealing to children.
Beyond psych? More people have inhabited the Office level in Counter-Strike for more combined time than any office building ever built in Manhattan. But you'll never read about video game architecture in an architecture journal, design blog, etc. It's a universal aversion to serious conversations about games just because they involve shooting aliens.
Can development psychologists get out of the ghetto of investigating games' impact on violence or attention deficit? Maybe. Studies like the one done in this article are a good step forward. But this study still indicts video games for something, just different video games. The improvement-in-vision studies are on the right track, but they are at this point half a decade old. Surely someone has some fresh ideas.
Those game developers haven't read a single page of psychology literature. Yet they have succeeded in massive, non-chemical cognitive behavioral modifications. You'd think someone could make an academic career out of this.
The specific description of action video games in the article is:
> complex 3D settings, that feature quickly moving targets that pop in and out of view, that necessitate substantial visual processing of the periphery, that include large amounts of clutter and task-irrelevant objects, that require the player to consistently switch between highly focused and highly distributed attention, and that require the player to make rapid, but accurate decisions
There is no mention of violence or shooting.
How do you know that? I've been on gamedev conference where developers talked about monetization strategies for mobile free to play games, and it was basicaly dark psychology course (was revolting and fascinating at the same time).
This particular episode mentions the previous study on violent video games, and talks about how maybe video games actually help make people more empathetic:
It's like reading - it's worth it for the eintertainment, and the benefits are nice bonus. And it's easy to lose too much time on it. But I wouldn't switch from reading fiction to reading encyclopedia to be "safer from book addiction".
Our brains are really good at learning to optimize for a very specific task.
edit: reference
[0] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131514...
http://theinvisiblegorilla.com/blog/2012/02/15/how-experts-r...
Just wait a generation.
I am willing to bet however, that your opinion on sports is too pessimistic. At low to medium levels sports probably helps academic performance, because it helps everything. (But for a proper bet, we'd have to agree on more precise terms, and odds we are offering, and an amount, and then go ahead and do some research.)
I wonder if in a generation we'll see posters encouraging kids to play video games instead of blobbing out in front of the Facebook or whatever the new bogeyman is. I get the feeling that using a computer (or phone or whatever it is) is becoming accepted as default OK and now it's the specific types of app that can be "good" or "bad".
There are still plenty of people who have grown up with games as a normal part of life that look down on those who play them as wasting time and hold it as a badge of honour when they no longer play them, as though this means they have now matured.
Modern sports grew out of gentleman's games in universities, the whole culture was something that people looked up to as civilized before it came to be something everyone 'participated' in.
> At low to medium levels sports probably helps academic performance
I don't believe the parent was talking about actually playing sports, which would help, but was more talking about the Sunday Afternoon Football game where it is socially acceptable to sit and watch the game and associated commentary for hours
> [...] but sports are [...] for kids to _do_. [...] correlation between time spent _playing_ sport and academic performance, [...] preventing obesity [...]
"Things of Beauty: Super Smash Bros. as Spectator Sport"
There will be convergence between sports and video games - probably to the annoyance of both sides, at first - because it already is converging.