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[The Faceless Master]

Video game players may spend a lot of time on the couch, but when they're ready to go out they can find their keys quicker than the rest of us, a study suggests.

Researchers found that gamers who devote much of their free time to Grand Theft Auto and Super Mario may be able to scan their environment and spot the target of their search more quickly than non-gamers can.

In experiments with college students who were either hard-core video game players or novices, the researchers found that players were quicker to detect target objects on a busy computer screen than their peers were.

The findings, published in the journal Acta Psychologica, suggest that the vigilant watchfulness video games require makes for quicker visual processing.

Gamers' brains don't appear to have any specialized search strategy, they're just faster, explained lead study author Dr. Alan Castel, a post-doctorate fellow in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Source: c|net News.com

 

[Wario64]

thanks to metroid prime's lock on scanning!

 

[AniHawk]

The next step in human evolution.

 

[Ranger X]

We are faster. We rules.

 

[Salmon]

Well, this excludes me...

 

[Zaptruder]

Video gamers: better hand eye coordination... fatter.

 

[E2G]

quote: "Researchers found that gamers who devote much of their free time to Grand Theft Auto and Super Mario may be able to scan their environment and spot the target of their search more quickly than non-gamers can.
"

OMG! Gamers better at gaming then non-gamers!!! :lol
j/k

Seriously, this excludes me... I used to work in a video store and I was better at spotting the desired cover by memory rather than by visually scanning the shelves.

 

[Bebpo]

I dunno about quicker. But I'd reckon gamers have bloodier eyes! Everytime I look in the mirror after a long 5-8 hour stretch of playing my eyes are always shot red; people always used to ask me if I was high ^^;

 

[sprsk]

i can never find my keys

 

[Bebpo]

i can never find my keys

:lol

 

[Oracle Dragon]

This also just in: 90% of hard-core video game players also suffer from being underweight, pasty complexion, and possess the physical strength of an average 12 year old girl.

 

[Red Blaster]

This also just in: 90% of hard-core video game players also suffer from being underweight, pasty complexion, and possess the physical strength of an average 12 year old girl.

Haha. Nerds.

 

[Bluecondor]

If this is true, why do I suck so bad at that Megatouch video game they have at bars (you know, the one where you get a picture side-by-side, and you have to pick out the differences)?

Women love this game, and they are great at it. In fact, women who don't play any other video game often play this game.

 

[Koshiba]

I don't know if that's true or not.. But I'm not very good at looking for things IRL..

 

[Of All Trades]

This also just in: 90% of hard-core video game players also suffer from being underweight, pasty complexion, and possess the physical strength of an average 12 year old girl.

I can't stand horseshit stereotyping like this. Who the fuck do you think you are to lump nine out of ten gamers into some sort of small-minded slot? If you had stopped to consider your racist, hate-mongering ignorance, you would have realized that only 45% of hard-core gamers suffer from being underweight, pasty, and weak.

The other 45% are hippos.

edit: I'd be curious to know if the research found that gamers' eyes are actually faster, or if it's more of a side-effect of being constantly exposed to logical icon placement, and thus being able to find things on a screen faster due to knowing where something "should" be. I know at work I can navigate the most cluttered of desktops with relative ease, while I have to carefully guide people through standard menu bars.

 

[koam]

i can never find my keys

Yeah seriously, me neither. I think GAF ruined my eyes. Well GAF definetly ruined my grammar.

 

[callous]

I can't find shit outside of a videogame. People make fun of me for not being able to find shit.

 

[kaching]

There's also an article in this month's Discover magazine that talks about how the brain may benefit from videogames.

http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-05/features/brain-on-video-games/

There are several lines of experimentation discussed in the article but one line in particular sounds very similar to the research findings discussed at the top of this topic:

In the spring of 2003, A research assistant in cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester named Shawn Green began helping cognitive science professor Daphne Bavelier with a project investigating visual perception. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Bavelier’s lab had found that people born deaf do not show better-than-average visual skills across the board; instead, they have very specific skills, including the ability to monitor their peripheral field. So Bavelier and Green began developing computerized tests to track these abilities. But a strange thing happened as they worked on the software. When Green took the tests himself, he scored off the charts. “Since I was an avid action video-game player,” he says, “we decided to test the hypothesis that experience with action video games was the origin of the observed differences.”

Green and Bavelier devised an experiment involving a series of quick visual-recognition tests, such as picking out the color of a letter or counting the number of objects on a screen. The study revealed dramatic perceptual differences between gamers and nongamers that were far more pronounced than the differences between hearing and deaf individuals. When Green tweaked the tests to make them challenging enough so the gamers wouldn’t have perfect scores, the nongamers sometimes performed so poorly that their answers might as well have been random guesses. The researchers also debunked the premise that visually intelligent people were more likely to be attracted to video games in the first place. They had a group of nonplayers spend a week immersed in the World War II game Medal of Honor and found that the group’s skills on the visual test improved as well. The evidence was overwhelming: Games were literally making people perceive the world more clearly.

 

[DarienA]

i can never find my keys

keys shit I can never find the pen I just put down when I'm writing....

 

[Oracle Dragon]

One would hope that this sort of news isn't coming as a shock. The human body is designed to learn and improve from repetition. Video games arn't magical. If I didn't play games at all, but spent 8 hours (or more) a week responding to visual stimulus designed to test my reflexes and perception, I would expect to do at least as well as "gamers". The thing is that all of these so called "non-gamers" don't spend any time doing that, so of course they are not going to score well. If they put people in that study group who regularily practice athletic sports involving similar traits, such as squash or tennis, I'm sure they would score much higher than the "non-gamers" as well.

 

[Idioteque]

Social life am cry

 

[U.2.K. Tha Greate$t]

Science talk. :lol

 

[pj]

There's also an article in this month's Discover magazine that talks about how the brain may benefit from videogames.

http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-05/features/brain-on-video-games/

There are several lines of experimentation discussed in the article but one line in particular sounds very similar to the research findings discussed at the top of this topic:

Videogames have helped my perception so much that important sentences in articles just seem to jump out at me..

 

[Calidor]

This also just in: 90% of hard-core video game players also suffer from being underweight, pasty complexion, and possess the physical strength of an average 12 year old girl.

:lol :lol

 

[MoxManiac]

I dunno, my eyes are going to shit. I know that when it's time to renew my license and am forced to take another eye exam, i'm going to fail. Ergh.

 

[kaching]

One would hope that this sort of news isn't coming as a shock. The human body is designed to learn and improve from repetition. Video games arn't magical.

It shouldn't come as a shock, no, but all too often people tend to overlook common sense for the more sensationalist angle, as is the case right now with videogames where more emphasis seems to be placed on their potential negative effects (exposure to violent imagery, lack of physical exertion, for example). So its good to see that science isn't simply going where the money is and is putting effort into looking at the positive effects as well.

Further, just because you can intuitively assume something is true doesn't mean you understand the full extent of the effect involved based on inuition alone. That's what some of this work is aimed at - understanding just how effective videogames can be as learning/development tools.

Videogames have helped my perception so much that important sentences in articles just seem to jump out at me..

:lol Well played.

 

[Fuzzy]

If this is true, why do I suck so bad at that Megatouch video game they have at bars (you know, the one where you get a picture side-by-side, and you have to pick out the differences)?

You're drunk? :lol

BTW I think they should do this test with Where's Waldo? books.

 

[Bluecondor]

You're drunk? :lol

BTW I think they should do this test with Where's Waldo? books.

Ya - but the women that play this game at bars are drunk too - and they kick ass at this game. The one woman I'm thinking of - sits there with a beer in front of her and a cigarette in the other hand. She can get to level 20, no problem, when I usually get tripped up by level 5.

 

[OmniGamer]

This reminds me of an old letter in an issue of Nintendo Power from a kid who said his vision improved due to playing video games.

 

[G-Fex]

This also just in: 90% of hard-core video game players also suffer from being underweight, pasty complexion, and possess the physical strength of an average 12 year old girl.

not me , I work out.