Encefalus

Remember what we were saying at How the Dark Knight, cartoons and video games make you smarter and what this had to do with the Flynn effect. I found more proof to support my theories!

Take this link I found in Sharp Brains: Videogames for Cognitive Training?

It commented on this report Playing Video Games Offers Learning Across Life Span, Say Studies which talks about some researches that proove various benefits of playing videogames. As it seems, video games can improve cognitive and perceptual skills.

"In one paper, Fordham University psychologist Fran C. Blumberg, PhD, and Sabrina S. Ismailer, MSED, examined 122 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders’ problem-solving behavior while playing a video game that they had never seen before to show that playing video games can improve cognitive and perceptual skills."

"A study of 33 laparoscopic surgeons found that those who played video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures and made 37 percent fewer errors compared to those who did not play video games, said Gentile."

"A second study of 303 laparoscopic surgeons (82 percent men; 18 percent women) also showed that surgeons who played video games requiring spatial skills and hand dexterity and then performed a drill testing these skills were significantly faster at their first attempt and across all 10 trials than the surgeons who did not the play video games first."

Also, do you remember what we were saying about World of Warcraft at How the Dark Knight, cartoons and video games make you smarter and what this had to do with the Flynn effect. Take a look at this research

"In another paper, researchers Constance Steinkuehler, PhD, and Sean Duncan, MA, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison looked at how game-based learning can supplement textbooks and science labs in fostering scientific thinking. They analyzed a random sample of nearly 2,000 discussion posts in November 2006 where participants talked about various game-related topics."

Scientific thinking can be learned in virtual worlds, said Duncan. The majority of participants (86 percent) shared their knowledge to solve problems and more than half the participants (58 percent) used systematic and evaluative processes indicative of scientific reasoning.

"These forums illustrate how sophisticated intellectual practices to improve game play mimic actual scientific reasoning," said Duncan. "Gamers are openly discussing their strategies and thinking, creating an environment in which informal scientific reasoning practices are being learned by playing these online video games."

The future of training in science

So, as you can see, video games can really improve our cognitive functions. In fact, as I had explained in How the Dark Knight, cartoons and video games make you smarter and what this had to do with the Flynn effect, virtual worlds have the ability to represent any kind of rules or system. They can be as complex as we want them to be. They’re capabilities are, literally, limitless. However, I had just mentioned a few uses of video-games, but I dind’t analyse the full spectrum of possibilities that virtual simulation opens to us. However, Sharp Brains has another post on that that really opened my eyes: Cognitive Training for Basketball Game-Intelligence: Interview with Prof. Daniel Gopher

Daniel Gopher is a "fellow of the U.S. Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and the International Ergonomics Association, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Human Factors Engineering at Technion, Israel’s Institute of Science, and one of world’s leading figures in the field of Cognitive Training." (wow). In this interview he explains how he and his partners study the cognitive skills required in certain tasks and how they use this information to create inexpensive virtual simulations, that can be proven even more efficient than the physical ones.

Sometimes, virtual simulations can be terrifyingly real

As it seems, more and more people are taking notice of the virtual worlds’ capabilities. Students once had pencil and papers. Now, we have a full fledging reality in front of our eyes. Of course, these don’t come at no price, since the article, also, reports findings concerning the negative effects of video games on obesity and violence. So, cognitive scientists should dig further into the subject, so as we can rip only the benefits of this new way of entertainment and learning. We’ll come again and again on this matter as more research unveils further ways to improve our functioning, leading humanity to the 21st century.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Cognitive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.