Research

KA-POW! Now, Go Read a Book

Spending hours in front of a computer playing action-oriented video games like Grand Theft Auto3, Medal of Honor, or Half-Life remains no guarantee of future academic success.

But a new study published in Nature by Daphne Bavelier, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and graduate student researcher Shawn Green ’01 indicates that serious gamers do improve their visual perception skills by playing the kind of games that make most parents cringe.

“Players can process visual information more quickly and can track 30 percent more objects than nonplayers,” says Bavelier, a member of the Center for Visual Science. “Several game players even achieved perfect scores on tests barely doable for nongame players.”

The findings may help guide rehabilitation treatments for people who suffer strokes or other neurological ailments.

In the study, Bavelier and Green designed three tests of visual acuity and perception and then tested the ability of gamers and nongamers to complete the tasks. For each, the gamers scored significantly higher, and the researchers found that as little as 10 hours of game playing was enough to significantly increase visual awareness.

Many parents also became aware of the study’s findings last spring, thanks to international media attention, most of it focusing on the dichotomy between playing video games and other academic skills.

From the earliest report, both researchers have emphasized that gaming is no substitute for building other areas of the brain or for exercises that demand prolonged attention, such as reading or solving math problems.

“It’s frustrating, because the media keeps reporting my findings as saying that violent video games are good for you, but that’s not what the study says,” Bavelier told Newsweek last June. “The key to our findings is the speed of the games and that visual events could happen to you at any time. That’s what improves your skills.”

Green and Bavelier ultimately would like to create nonviolent action games that could help neurologically imparied patients recover their visual awareness.