Video Games Make You Smarter: Backed up by Research

bevox

Junior Member
Many people claim that video games make you smarter. However, intelligence is a broad concept, and we don’t know what effect video games have on it. Even then, lots of research has shown that video games can have a tangible impact on cognition. Let’s explore these in detail and answer the question, “Do video games make you smarter?”

Video games increase your attention span, improve decision making and problem-solving capabilities in competitive environments, and improve memory and learning. Video games improve the cognitive abilities that society values.

Effect of Video Games on Attention
A study by Green and Bavelier found that action video games enhance attentional control. According to this study, action games involve high-speed gameplay and contain objects that quickly pop in and out of the visual field. They seem to have the broadest benefits to perceptual and attentional abilities.

Most action games require the player to keep their attention focused on specific objects or entities. These objects or entities can be presented in isolation or amongst other irrelevant distractions. As a result, action games notably boost selective attention, i.e., a person’s ability to focus on one particular stimulus.
Gamers who play action games can track independently moving objects faster and better than non-video-game players. They demonstrate a higher degree of spatial awareness compared to their non-gamer counterparts.
A test often used in the screening of ADD found that gamers had faster responses than those that did not play video games. Moreover, they did not sacrifice accuracy for speed. It is also important to note that the test recognized their responses as being anticipatory. That means that gamers relied on prediction rather than reaction. As a result, the study concluded that video game players are faster but not more impulsive than non-gamers.
A study that compared 27 expert gamers with 30 amateur ones found that action games correlated with higher gray matter volume in the brain.
 
Top