Do Video Games Make You Smarter?

The 'maybe not' articles are so pointless. They bring up a bunch of theories to attempt to poke holes in things, and in the mean time they're even less rigorous than the tests they are trying to poke holes in.

I don't think most gamers even -care- if video games make them better at other things.

From personal experience, I find I have a few talents that the rest of my family doesn't have. My reaction times and eye-hand coordination are much better. It's quite common for me to knock something off a table and simply catch it on the way down, where the rest of my family would simply watch it and then pick it up afterwards. It's not something I think about. It just happens. It has amazed more than a few people.

My map skills are much better, as well as my pathfinding/path-remembering skills. If I drive a route twice, I've pretty much got a lock on it. I can also usually point directly at some landmark that's no longer visible, and I've usually got a good idea where North is. None of the rest of my family has any of this.

And puzzle-solving... I'd like to attribute that to video games, but the fact is that I just love it, and I'll do it no matter the medium. So I can't really say video games in particular did it, except that there are a LOT of puzzles in the games I play. Which certainly can't hurt.

You learn best by doing. And if what you're doing in a game maps 1:1 with another skill, then you're going to get better at it. It's that simple.