9 reasons to play video games to your advantage

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

There is a bad trail behind video games. They are often called a meaningless pastime that instills inertia in us, makes us aggressive and fat. Is it really? No.

Only the lazy does not make fun of the fat sides of gamers and does not tell them about the dangers of video games right in their red eyes. This is not entirely fair and not always objective. Let's restore the balance and find out what impartial science finds useful in gaming.

Shooter enthusiasts make accurate decisions faster

Researchers at the University of Rochester conducted a number of studies and concluded that video games develop a heightened sensitivity in the gamer to what is happening around them. And this is not limited to virtual worlds. It improves a wide range of general skills that can be useful in everyday life, such as multitasking, reading small text, recognizing people in a crowd, or moving around town.

One of the events was attended by several dozen people aged 18–25 years, far from the world of video entertainment. Scientists divided them into two groups, each of which had to play 50 hours. Some played shooters, while others played a family simulator. After that, the subjects passed a series of special tests for the speed of decision-making. The first group coped with the task 25% faster than the second without compromising accuracy.

The authors shed light on the nature of this phenomenon. People make decisions based on the probabilities that they are constantly calculating in their heads. The brain accumulates pieces of visual and auditory information and eventually assembles from them a sufficient picture, perceived as an accurate solution. Fans of shooters reached the required threshold faster because their visual and auditory analyzers were more efficient.

Gamers have better control over their dreams

Jayne Gackenbach, a renowned psychologist at Grant McEwan University of Canada, is a video game with dreams, because both represent an alternative reality. And although dreams arise biologically in the human mind, and video games arise technologically, with the help of computers and game consoles, the parallels are still relevant.

Based on her research, Jane claims that gamers are more likely to encounter such an unusual phenomenon as lucid dreaming. In this state, a person realizes that he is dreaming and can to some extent control its content. Scientists directly associate this with the experience gained by players in virtual reality.

Jane develops the theme and describes a well-known theory that dreams mimic threatening situations from everyday life. Nightmares help the body hone its defensive skills in a safe environment so that it can then be applied in real life situations when needed. Gackenbach studied the dream reports of 35 men and 63 women and found that gamers more easily perceived the threat looming in a dream, and sometimes turned the situation upside down and gave battle to the source of danger. That is, they turned a nightmare scenario into a fun raid.

Games make people wiser and kinder

Strategy games can affect the humanity and behavioral thinking of gamers in real life. So at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose staff created Quandary, an educational game for high school students that raises a fundamental question of the ethical development of a child.

During the game, you lead a space colony and solve dilemmas between the settlers cut off from the Earth. Your goal is to understand the details of the dispute by talking to all parties to the conflict. You have to separate facts from subjective opinions, find common ground and offer your way out of the situation. Moreover, there are no right or wrong decisions in the game. Each side has its own piece of truth, and you must understand the position of each settler.

Scientists characterize their game as not too preachy and not too serious. They do not think that such games will necessarily improve people's understanding of the world, but they believe that they will make them think about an objective assessment of real situations.

Video games improve vision

High-speed first person games improve the player's vision. It was previously believed that the ability to recognize small differences in shades of gray could not be trained. But Daphne Bavelier says otherwise. The professor found that avid gamers were 58% better at picking up subtle differences in contrast. Usually this effect is achieved through glasses or eye surgery.

Quick games use the full power of the human visual system, the brain adapts to new conditions, and skills are transferred to life outside the monitor. Moreover, the positive effect persists even two years after the "tie". Daphne believes that video games can be useful in treating amblyopia, which is characterized by impaired transmission of the visual image to the brain.

Video games improve cognitive skills

Games can restore weakened mental capacity in older adults. This is evidenced by the results carried out within the walls of the University of California. A group of neuroscientists led by Adam Gazzaley has developed NeuroRacer, a seemingly straightforward arcade racing game in which the player drives a car with his left hand and reacts to (or ignores) the traffic signs that appear with his right.

A group of people aged 60 to 85 years old played it for six months for 12 hours a month. After that, the scientists tested a number of the mental capabilities of the subjects.

It turned out that the training was not in vain: volunteer gamers were better at coping with several tasks at the same time. This is quite logical. More unexpected was the fact that older people began to better remember information and retain attention. Moreover, the effect persisted for several months after the completion of the experiments.

Support the conclusions and readings of the electroencephalograms. During exercise, low-frequency theta waves associated with attention were amplified in people's brains. Dr. Gazzali notes that the activity in the prefrontal cortex of the elderly has become similar to the activity in the prefrontal cortex in younger people.

Games improve professional skills

A laparoscope is a complex medical instrument designed for carrying out diagnostic procedures and surgical operations on the abdominal organs through a small hole with a diameter of 5 to 10 mm. Given the complexity of manipulations and time constraints, training qualified personnel for laparoscopy is becoming a very responsible and costly task.

A group of doctors from the University of Rome La Sapienza conducted a curious one and found out that an ordinary home console can be a good simulator for scalpel masters.

Forty-two postgraduate students in general, vascular and endoscopic surgery underwent a preliminary test session on a laparoscopic simulator, after which they were randomly assigned to two teams. Over the next four weeks, half of the trainees played fairly casual games on the Nintendo Wii. A second session of similar tests showed that all participants improved their skills. However, gamers scored better for 13 of the 16 performance metrics reviewed.

Scientists have concluded that video game consoles can be useful, inexpensive, and entertaining ways to educate young professionals. Of course, in addition to the standard simulator-based surgical education and real-life operations.

Games help children learn to read

About 10% of children suffer from dyslexia, a neurological disorder characterized by difficulty in recognizing words accurately and / or fluently and inadequate reading and writing abilities. Traditional treatment for dyslexia is a long and laborious process, so scientists are looking for alternatives. For example, Italian doctors from the University of Padua play therapy.

The researchers tested reading and attention skills in two groups of dyslexic children before and after they played regular and high-speed games for nine sessions of 80 minutes a day. They found that action video games improved reading speed without sacrificing accuracy by more than one year of casual learning, and yielded results similar to a year of specialized treatment.

Video games improve motor skills in preschoolers

In a small study by Australian scientists, some motor skills in children playing interactive and passive video games.

Deakin University evaluated the level of physical activity in 53 children aged three to six years in the context of the time they devote to video games. It turned out that after playing the Nintendo Wii, children are better at hitting the ball, catching bouncing objects and throwing, they have better hand-eye coordination. There were no differences in the ability to run and jump.

Biotic games teach complex things

Biotic games are video games in which you control a real microorganism instead of the usual virtual object.

Unusual genre Stanford University biophysicist Ingmar H. Riedel-Kruse. The scientist has created four "serious" games, which are based on living biological processes. With the help of electric fields, a person controls a single-celled organism and guides it through obstacles encountered, paints over areas of the screen and even plays football.

An extraordinary concept designed to increase the motivation of students in the study of complex sciences.