Video games have been blamed for destroying morals, for taking precedence over schoolwork and for ruining the ability of children to focus, but recent research suggests they also have an upside. A University of Rochester study found that playing video games - especially action video games like Halo - can help a gamer’s vision, attention and ability to multitask.
The study, published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Review’s “Cognitive Science,” cites groups of laparoscopic surgeons where gamers demonstrated shorter surgery completion times and fewer errors than non-game playing surgeons. Lauren Sergio, a neuroscientist at York University in Toronto told NPR, an American public radio station, that proficient gamers primarily use the frontal cortex, according to brain scans she conducted, and nongamers rely on their parietal cortex for the same tasks.
“The non-gamers had to think a lot more and use a lot more of the workhorse parts of their brains for eyehand coordination,” Ms. Sergio told NPR. “Whereas the gamers really didn’t have to use that much brain at all, and they just used these higher cognitive centers to do it.”
Video games are entertaining and engrossing, which is the reason people spend hours playing them. But can video games be more than that? John Tierney of The Times suggests recruiting people involved in games to work toward solving real-world problems.
“Gamers are engaged, focused, and happy,” Edward Castronova, a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University who has studied and designed online games, told The Times. “How many employers wish they could say that about even a tenth of their work force?
“Many activities in games are not very different from work activities. Look at information on a screen, discern immediate objectives, choose what to click and drag.”
Though no company has been able to swap the office for a computer game full of employees quite yet, there are attempts. Mr. Tierney writes about Sparked, a “microvolunteering” Web site that posts challenges from non-profits for users to complete, like brainstorming five fund-raising ideas. If people volunteer a few minutes of their time, it has the potential to save the non-profits thousands of dollars that would have been spent on consultants and surveys.
Other technologies, often called distractions, are helping provide valuable intelligence to American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Online chatrooms are used to pass information from Air Force analysts in the United States to Marine convoys and patrols, warning them of enemy positions and roadside bombs. The analysts - who were practically weaned on computers and interactive video games - use networking technology and view video feeds from far away to create “fluid connections needed to hunt small groups of fighters and other fleeting targets,” The Times reported.
Gunnery Sergeant Sean N. Smothers, a Marine liaison to the analysts who has served five tours in Iraq, spoke highly of the analysts even though they had never been stationed in a battle area. “To me, this whole operation was like a template for what we should be doing in the future,” Sergeant Smothers told The Times.
And if the sergeant is right, perhaps all that screen time is not wasted after all. JAMES PATRICK SCHMIDT
