Introduction
Video games have a bad legacy. They are often called a meaningless pastime that instills inertia in us, making us aggressive and fat. Is it really? No.
Only a lazy person doesn’t make fun of the fat sides of gamers and doesn’t 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 fans make accurate decisions faster
Researchers at the University of Rochester conducted a series of studies and concluded that video games develop a gamer’s increased sensitivity to what is happening around them. And it’s not limited to virtual worlds. Improves a wide range of general skills that can be useful in everyday life, such as multitasking, reading small text, recognizing people you know in a crowd, or getting around the city.
Scientists divided them into two groups, each of which had to play 50 hours. Some played shooters, while others played a family simulator. After which the subjects underwent a series of special tests for the speed of decision-making. The first group completed the task 25% faster than the second without compromising accuracy.
Gamers have better control over their dreams
Jayne Gackenbach, a renowned psychologist at Canada’s Grant MacEwan University, compares video games to dreams, because both represent an alternative reality. And although dreams arise biologically in the human mind, and video games arise technologically through computers and game consoles, the parallels are still relevant.
In this state, a person understands that he is seeing a dream and can to some extent control its content. Scientists directly link this to the experiences players have in virtual reality.
Jane develops the theme and describes the well-known theory that dreams simulate threatening situations in everyday life. 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 around and fought the source of the danger. That is, they turned a nightmare scenario into a fun raid.
Games make people wiser and kinder
Strategy games can influence the humanity and behavioral thinking of gamers in real life. This is the opinion of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose employees created Quandary, an educational game for high school students that raises the fundamental question of the ethical development of a child.
During the game, you lead a space colony and resolve dilemmas that arise between settlers cut off from Earth. Your goal is to understand the details of the dispute by talking with 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 force them to 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 thought that the ability to recognize small differences in shades of gray could not be trained. But Daphne Bavelier’s research suggests otherwise. The professor found that avid gamers were 58% better at perceiving subtle differences in contrast. This effect is usually achieved through glasses or eye surgery.
Moreover, the positive effect persists even two years after the start. Daphne believes that video games may be useful in treating amblyopia, which is characterized by impaired transmission of visual images to the brain.
Video games improve cognitive abilities
Games can restore weakened mental abilities in older people. This is evidenced by the results of an experiment conducted within the walls of the University of California.
A group of people aged 60 to 85 played it for six months, 12 hours a month. After which the scientists tested a number of the subjects’ mental abilities.
It turned out that the training was not in vain: volunteer gamers were better able to cope with several tasks at the same time. This is quite logical. More unexpectedly, older adults were better able to remember information and maintain attention. Moreover, the effect persisted for several months after the completion of the experiments.
The conclusions and readings of electroencephalograms are supported. During exercise, low-frequency theta waves, associated with attention, increased in people’s brains. Dr. Gazzali notes that activity in the prefrontal cortex of older people became similar to activity in the prefrontal cortex of younger people.