Does playing video games make you smarter?

marginalrevolution.com

4 points·mathattack··5 comments

They used adults in their study, playing Super Mario 64. This suggests to me that they didn't deliberately go for something with massive amounts of problem solving.

Short answer: No. Long answer: Noooooooooooo.

Yes it does if you are playing a game that demands your grey cells to think creatively and make it to find solution. If you are playing candy crush or temple run then in no way you are going to increase the count of grey cells in your brain.

Candy Crush Saga is a vast collection of puzzles to be solved. New mechanisms are introduced regularly; solving each level involves figuring out how the new stuff works and then determining and implementing a strategy to overcome the new challenges. In short, to play Candy Crush you need to think creatively and find solutions.

What's boggling is to realize that there are people whose full time job is to invent new levels that will be just hard enough to be challenging and even a little frustrating but not so hard as to seem completely impossible and thereby force players give up in disgust.

(And I don't play temple run, but might that game not reinforce quick assessment and reaction time?)

That's great then. Still there are other games like Mortal Combat that allows a user to think holistically and do explore every possible thing to solve the game.

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