By A. Noelle

Aunties with tech savvy may be interested to know that nieces and nephews who are hooked on video games may make better and quicker decisions when dealing with visual input.

The study, reported in the journal Attention, Perception and Psychophysics, included 125 college students and compared action video game players and non-gamers to see if the two groups differed in terms of “visual sensory memory” (i.e., Iconic Memory). Study participants took a visual memory test that flashed a circle of eight letters for one-tenth of a second. The students were then asked to recall the letters after a delay of 13 milliseconds to 2.5 seconds.

Researchers found that although the gamers did not retain information for a longer period of time than the non-gamers, they did get more visual input and thus outperformed the non-gamers overall. This suggested to researchers that the gamers see the information more immediately and are better at using the input to make correct decisions.

Study author Gregory Appelbaum, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Duke University School of Medicine stated in a news release: “Gamers see the world differently. They are able to extract more information from a visual scene.”

Further Reading

-APA: Your brain on video games
-APA: Kids & the Media
-Common Sense Media: Nonviolent Video Games

Photo: Ambro
Newsletter image by imagerymajestic
Published: July 16, 2013