Video gaming - good for the eyes?
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I know my kids are jumping for joy at the moment. It was announced recently that a study proved that video gaming is good for the eyesight. Apparently researchers at the University of Rochester conducted an experiment that showed that fast action gaming actually improved the players eyesight.
“Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information,” says Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences.
“These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it,” Bavelier adds. “That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life.”
Two test groups were used, both tested beforehand, and then tested again after 30 hours of gameplay. One group played the first shooter game “Unreal Tournament” while the other played less visually stimulating game “Tetris”. The group playing the first person shooter scored 20% better on their 2nd vision testing while the Tetris group showed no significant change.
About the only news that would excite a larger group would be if marijuana were suddenly declared legal! Keep this in mind when you are telling your kids they are playing games too much and it won’t lead to anything meaninful. Make sure they haven’t heard about this study though!
[tags]video games, eyesight, vision[/tags]
2 Comments
RD
February 15th, 2007
at 5:58am
The video games that are only beneficial to the eyes and brain are the fast paced shoot-em-up games because everything in the world is constantly changing therefore more information needs to be interpreted all the time; using more of the brain. Games such as Tetris or practically any other game where there are objects or items that have small movement or scenarios that do not change much would obviously not have as much benefit. Like a web browser with cookies turned on, the browser (cough firefox cough) has less to do, same with a brain.
Kids seeing this article will probably go tell their parents (look mom & dad, its offical! Now i’m going to spend 16 hours a day playing Dawn of War!) Parents who do not follow games will happen to agree on this without the knowledge that DoW is a RTS game with little changing scope and therefore do not fall into this category.
Parents, do the right thing and buy little Tommy a Wii with Red Steel. At least then his brain AND his body will be active at the same time… too bad its rated 18… but that never stopped you from buying him GTA when he was 11 right?
Burton Smith
February 15th, 2007
at 5:18pm
This has nothing to do with PDF files?