Study: Playing Computer Games Makes Kids Smarter

Nightspore writes: "The Sunday Times is running this article on the results of a study by the Economic and Social research Council (ESRC). The study found that, 'people who play games regularly seem to develop a mental state that we have seen before only in serious athletes or professionals such as astronauts, whose life depends on concentration and co-ordination ... Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people ... They had more friends, were better adjusted and tended to read more.'" Hey it's just a study, but it's amusing.

Cause and effect?

So perhaps gettings smarter makes people more violent.

I certainly feel more inclined to kill people the more I learn about them.

the statistics nazi says...

Bryce did her research by visiting computer gamers, often during regional or national competitions around Britain

The population of interest is computer gamers but the sample is taken from those gamers who go to competitions. Therefore the sample is not random and one ought not make conclusions about all gamers based on gamers who go to competitions.

A recent study by the Home Office indicated that those who regularly played computer games when young were more likely to go to university and get a better-than-average job

Someone already mentioned correlation != causation, but I'll elaborate. Television sets are much cheaper than computers and internet access; also, university attendance is very much correlated to income. I don't have survey data to back this up, but it seems that income ought to have been considered to make sure that it's not a lurking variable. (affects both variables but is unseen)

</soapbox>

Re:quake?

hmm.. i can see how this would work based on the games from the mid-eighties (pacman...

Yeah, if video games really affect kids can you imagine the result of Pacman. We'd all be hanging out in dark places, eating pills, and listening to electronic music... =P

Role Playing Games

Hey, what about D&D? That helped me get a head start on my math way back when. I hated to add and multiply. D&D game mechanics gave me a better head for numbers.

The only thing video games did was drive my ambition to hack warez that I downloaded and squeeze every last bit of juice out of that crappy old OS (DOS).

Civilization and Machiavelli

We all know it though.

A specific real-world example (my own experience):

I played, and I still do, a *lot* of Civilization as a young lad. I later on read the works of Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince, The Discourses).

The truly scary thing is that I kept thinking of Civilization the entire time and the information made a lot more sense to me after playing all of those hours. (my conservative estimate: 3 or 4 months worth, but I hauled that number out of my ass)

I had a better understanding of his works simply because of my experience in that game and what's more, my strategies in said game have changed, so that I am a much better player because of it.

Of course, reading all of that has ruined me in that I now tend to write really long sentences, though I haven't yet achieved the one feat that I have only seen from Machiavelli and Dave Barry, which is, of course, the 1.5 page sentence, in which the author creates an extraordinarily long sentence, containing much information, all the while being grammatically correct, and conveying one basic idea in a surprisingly clear manner, such that the reader, after having read it, actually goes back to see where said sentence began, and reads it again, just to make sure that the sentence is, indeed, that long.

In other news...

In other news... looking at porn helps relationships, because it helps with hand/umm... coordination, and gets people more in tune with their bodies.
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Playing games does not _make_ people smarter

According to the article, the research method employed by study was to survey gamers often during regional or national competitions. Assuming the data extrapolated is correct (although some would argue that 100 skilled gamers is hardly a large enough sample), that does _not_ mean the kids became smart from games.

Just because factor A and factor B are both present in something, it does not mean factor B was caused by factor A, or vice versa. They could both be merely caused by a third, unseen factor.

Just because people who are smarter play video games, it does not mean that video games make people smarter. It just means smarter kids play video games. But don't misconstrue a taste in video games as being brilliant. It could merely mean that the less intelligent don't pursue video games either because they can't understand them, or because they can't afford them.

I wouldn't be surprised if a study found that members of minority groups were less likely to play video games. This would be because of the disproportionate percentage of minorities who live in poverty. That doesn't mean it deserves a headline "Study: Playing Computer Games Makes Kids White."

Re:quake?

I 've hit the Zone in Q3:A... That place where everything is reflex, where no one on the map can even touch you. You win games by 30 or 40 frags over the second place person and barely get touched. You breeze through crowds of enemies leaving only a fine mist of blood in your wake... Then 3 hours later you finally snap out of it drenched in sweat, heart pounding, on a massive adrenaline high. It's just like running a marathon or competing in an all day martial arts tournament. It's great!

Kintanon

Leisure Suit Larry

All I needed to know about sex I learned from Leisure Suit Larry. Who says games aren't educational?

Re:Playing games does not _make_ people smarter

The greatest mystery to me is that people pay for this kind of flawed research. I mean, I can't even remember one which wasn't flawed/biased in one way or another.

I think that's exactly the reason people pay for it. That's why these studies are almost always so flawed.

Game Industry Exec: "Here is a $300,000. We'd like a study exploring how video games make kids smarter, and, umm... improve sexual performance among adults. Oh, and I believe you might find that they reduce cholesterol too. Check that out. Thanks!"

- Isaac =)

Zoning Out

Most computer games are good for developing concentration. The ideal is to obtain a zen-like state which figther pilots and athletes usually describe as being "in the zone". This is when you feel like you are inside the game, everything is reflex and the outside world disappears. I believe this is a talent which is definately not developed by most other typical teenage activities like watching TV, socialising, etc. I agree that the degree to which game players learn to concentrate will give them a great edge in other skills.

However, I'd still have reservations about having kids play lots of computer games. For one thing, zoning out is only good for some real world skills. If you want to be a pilot or racing driver it's great and for programmers and other technical people it's good too, however for other jobs it may be a bad thing. I feel that I do it too much (I'm an engineer), it makes me concetrate on some details and forget others.

I'd also worry about the type of games. It's not the violence that concerns me , but the mindlessness of a lot of current computer games. Strategy and RPGs may be very good for developing a wider range of skills, but FPS games only involve a small amout of tactics beyond blowing away anything that moves. So, you may be zoning out but only processing very simple actions.

Of course, this is only based on personal experience. YMMV.

Still the obsessive will exist.

They noted one teenager who played for 70 hours and had withdrawal symptoms when he abstained for 3 days. When you see someone mentioning such an extreme case, it is clear they have an agenda to push. There will always be people who are very obsessed with any thing of their choice. It could be a rock star (groupie), their weight (bulemic), or any of an infinitude of things that a person can be obsessed about. The fact that such a person is mentioned along with normal gamers just exposes the researchers hidden agenda.

Despite the fact that they are rare, you do not see the media giving tons of coverage to every person struck by lightning. People by now realize that even though being struck by lightning is rare, there is nothing spectacular about it. So the media doesn't cover it. If only the media would get over shark attacks. Sheesh. In any case, many people play video games, and many of them have different reasons for doing so: hobby, relaxation, obsession... Which type of person a media outlet chooses to cover as representing "gaming" tells more about the media outlet than it does about gamers themselves. Thankfully this article was mostly positive. Maybe I won't feel so sheepish about admitting to other adults that I play video games.

Don't tell my kids!

If my kids get a hold of this one, I'm done for.

Seriously, I'd rather they play video games (especially ones like Alpha Centauri and Riven) than watch TV. But I'd rather they be involved in electronics or tae kwon do or ultimate frisbee too. Too much of any one thing can be detrimental... I know from my unfortunate summer of Warcraft II in high school.

Re:Let's not be hasty

But if everyone plays video games except you, then you'll be the maladjusted one.

You: "Hello, good sir. How are you this fine day?"
hax0r1: "whatx0r?"
hax0r2: "what j00 say!?"
hax0r1: "I will own j00000!!!"
You: "Um... excuse me. Do you speak English?"
hax0r3: "Let's g0. This l00z3r doesn't speak 1337."

Sounds interesting, but the premise is flawed.

A couple quotes from the article that disprove this hypothesis:

"Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people."

"Bryce did her research by visiting computer gamers, often during regional or national competitions around Britain"

What her research proves is that gamers who are talented enough to play at "national competitions" have better hand-eye coordination, reflexes, and quicker responses. Duh, I already knew that. She should study me -- I play games constantly. And I lose. Badly.

Rather than studying people who excel at gaming she should have studied people before and after they took up gaming. The unorthodox and obviously biased means in which this study was carried out suggests the author was only fishing for a catchy headline.

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Considering the rest of the population

I can't help but think of all the kids considered in this study. Plenty of kids I grew up with went home and did nothing but watch TV. Given how large the penetration of TV is I can't help but think that anyone who doesn't watch a whole mass of TV is at a distinct advantage.

Re:Role Playing Games

D&D and Gamma World was some serious motivation for developing reading and writing skills. I discovered those games at a fairly young age and I give them some credit for boosting those skills.

Makes us more intelligent...

...or better read?
I remember back in the late 80's studying for Higher Physics, and reading a couple of pages of my textbooks while my ZX Spectrum games took 5 minutes to load...
An excellent way to break up time spent studying and time spent relaxing (playing "Lords of Chaos", for example)

Re:Playing games does not _make_ people smarter

It just means smarter kids play video games.

In fact, you're still skipping a logical step. It could just mean that those smart people who happen to play video games do better at it than everyone else (i.e. smart people could even play games less than others). I'll bet if you did a study at the world bowling championchip you'd find the contestants were also brighter in other areas. This does not necessarily mean that bowlers are smarter than everyone else. [bowlers, please disregard last sentence. It was a comment I pulled out of my hat, not one meant to be flamebait].

Do games make people smarter...

Or do smart people play more games? Things like computer games and athletics develop ability to concentrate for longer periods. But, this development could just be the result of a long attention span wanting to be worked on. The brain is like a muscle, it wants to be worked out to become stronger.

Neither, it turns out...

Read the article more closely, fellas.

Youngsters who play computer games regularly but not excessively also tend to have more friends and be better adjusted than those who make do with traditional pastimes such as reading and television.

That's compared to non-interactive activities like reading and television, not more-interactive activities like sports and playground play.

"People who play games regularly seem to develop a mental state that we have seen before only in serious athletes or professionals such as astronauts, whose life depends on concentration and co-ordination," said Jo Bryce, who led the research. "Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people."

So they develop better reflexes and thumb-eye coordination than people who watch TV passively, which is no surprise. But that's not the same as being more intelligent or better educated.

She found that although there remained a minority of gamers who were obsessive, the majority had a healthy mix of other interests and varied social lives. Playing games helped them to do better in other areas, including schoolwork.

So people who play video games obsessively still rot their brains, but kids who practice healthy moderation do well. So what? Seems to me that kids who practice any activity in moderation with other activities will do well.

Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University and an expert in computer gaming, found recently in a study of 800 children that those who played games "moderately"- no more than two hours a day-tended to do more sport than those who played no games. They had more friends, were better adjusted and tended to read more.

Of course, it's also possible that not being interested in sports shares the same cause as not being interested in games. This study was not scientific; it didn't raise one group of kids with video games, one group without, and expose both groups to an equal amount of other social activities. Correlation does not mean causation.

There is a certain scientific approach to the claim that video games help kids and adults develop better reflexes and hand-eye coordination, but that's no surprise, and it's completely different from claiming it makes them "smarter".

It's true !

I am convinced that having played Donkey Kong when I was young helped me develop early my barrel-avoiding, ladder-climbing and blond girl-rescuing abilities.

Let's not be hasty

I'm not going to draw any conclusions about this study without thinking more.

However, it has been my own anecdotal evidence that computer game playing, while improving hand-eye coordination and strategic thinking, does severly limit normal social interaction.

Modern computer games train gamers to work within the systems of chat rooms, message boards, and other online forms of communication. When the gamer is in a classical social situation (dinner party, traditional work meeting, academic classroom, etc), the result that I have noticed is that the gamer is:
1) Less social. That is, less likely to interact with other people because, for lack of a better phrase, the other people "just don't understand."
2) Think less critically about the situation. They become uninterested in anything that doesn't relate to current games or to the prospect of new games.
3) Have poor verbal skills. Nearly all computer games operate without a verbal component. The verbal skills of the gamer atrophies.

I am concerned that we are developing a culture, that is growing, of people who are less than ready to live up to their full potential.

This is just my concern. This is just based on anecdotal evidence. I accept the fact I may be totally off base.

Kids that grew up on Quake don't kill people...

...they just maim a lot of people's feet.

Re:Games and Learning

If you see games as a tool to teach people to persevere, overcome and work hard then yes, cheat codes are a negative thing.

However, if you see games as something to have fun experiencing then cheats are generally a good thing. They're a tool to skip frustrating, badly-balanced areas of a game and get to the fun stuff; a player who's really enjoying a game generally won't resort to cheating.

Now, all kids have to do is look up the cheat codes for God mode, and get after it with a BFG
Are you really bemoaning the fact that today's lazy kids don't work as hard at playing games?

Re:Cause and effect?

Don't forget that Hitler was also artistic and was a painter. I remember hearing something that if his paintings were better accepted he would never have become a dictator but perhaps stayed a simple painter.

Re:Role Playing Games

Hey, what about D&D? That helped me get a head start on my math way back when.

I knew a young man who was homeschooled in the unstructured mode - pointed toward resources and encouraged to learn. He had no interest in multiplication until discovering D&D at age thirteen, at which time it took him two days to "catch up with his grade level.

Last I heard he was a geometer by trade; writing software for math visualization.

Re:Role Playing Games

I definately agree about D&D helping with learning. No telling how many times I looked up the origins of the monster names in different mythologies. If I just had Google [google.com] back then...

Games and Learning

I look back at the time I spent on Zork...good night, I read all kinds of things to work out problems. Then, Wizardry...the mapping, the remembering spell names.

Now, all kids have to do is look up the cheat codes for God mode, and get after it with a BFG.

Re:Cause and effect?

There seems to be this fallacy that only dumb brutes are violent. If you look at the recent examples of the Columbine killers, or if you go back just a decade or so you have Colin Ferguson and Ted Bundy, both of whom were very intelligent, yet they were still murderers. The ultimate example of this is Hitler, I don't think that anyone will dispute his intelligence, but being smart didn't make him any less of a monster.