Decision Making Can Be Improved By Video Games
New scientific research shows that playing action computer games can help you make decisions more quickly and even the accuracy of those decisions.
Scientists had already demonstrated that video gamers had quicker reactions but the new research goes further.
It indicates that gamers not only make decisions more quickly but that those decisions are no less accurate, countering previous claims that gamers could simply be more trigger happy.
Half of the test subjects 18-25 year olds who did not normally play computer games spent 50 hours playing action games such as Call of Duty 7. The remaining 50% spent their 50 hours playing slower-paced strategy games.
The findings suggest that fast paced games, including driving games like Gran Turismo or sports games like Fifa 11, may also help to improve reaction times and making decisions.
Commenting on the findings, Daphne Bavelier, of the University of Rochester, New York and one of the authors of the study, said:
“It’s not the case that the action game players are trigger-happy and less accurate: they are just as accurate and also faster.
“Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference.”
Certainly it would not seem improbable that games such as Call of Duty 7 may improve a strategic and real time reaction to similar (if more pressurised and deadly) situations in real life.
Likewise, it is absolutely not beyond the realms of possibility that continued practice on driving games like Gran Turismo 5 could potentially help quicken reactions in a race situation. Especially given the realism that goes into recreating famous racing circuits.
It is, though, likely to take a fairly monumental leap in technology before playing on football games like Fifa 2011 is any substitute for playing yourself.
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