Thick in the head? Can't think straight? Maybe it's time to shoot people. Virtual people, of course.According to new research, plugging into action-oriented video games can accelerate a gamer's cognitive functions by up to 25%.
This is the findingof a recent University of Rochester experiment wherein dozens of 18-25-year-old casual gamers were split into two groups and made to play either 50-hours of "fast-moving, first person shooting games" - Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament 2 - or 50 hours of The (not-so-fast) Sims 2. Afterward, researchers subjected their red-eyed volunteers to a series of visual and audio tests. According to the results, those who played the action games were not only 25% quicker at answering, but just as apt to give as many correct answers as their Sim study partners.
In an effort to make sense of the results, one of the study's authors, Daphne Bavelier, offers: "It's not the case that the action game players are trigger-happy and less accurate: they are just as accurate and also faster. 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."
Ah, more validation for the hundreds of hours we've pumped into shooters! Not that we're planning to become combat surgeons any time soon...
[Source:Gamasutra]
Sep 14, 2010
Gaming's most bizarre decisions
They did what!? Say hello to gaming's most bungled business decisions
You Shall Not Pass
QUIZ: Whose bra is this?
Explore the uncanny valley and find out how well you really know your MMO avatars
