LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND, April 24, 2010
/24-7PressRelease/ -- In a study published on April 21st in the open-access journal Frontiers in Cognition, researchers at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam, led by Lorenza Colzato, have shown that playing First Person Shooter videogames is associated with superior mental flexibility.
Compared to non-players, players of such games are found to require a significantly shorter reaction time while switching between complex tasks, because they are required to develop a more responsive mindset to rapidly react to fast-moving visual and auditory stimuli, and to shift back and forth between different subduties.
A prompt response to situational changes is an essential skill for functional everyday behavior and it is greatly reduced with aging. Training elderly with ad-hoc videogames is, therefore, a potential strategy to successfully compensate for losses in their ability to adapt and restructure the cognitive system while changing situational demands.
First Person Shooter videogames are often accused by media of causing extreme behaviors (e.g. violent, addictive and anti-social behaviors) despite the fact that these effects are yet to be scientifically confirmed, and that players can be found at any age and socio-economical background. Compared to the amount of attention received by potentially negative effects, only little research was done on the beneficial influences that videogame experience may have on cognitive skills, and this study is the first of its kind.
http://www.frontiersin.org/psychology/cognition/paper/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00008/
Frontiers is an academic publishing house active in various science and medicine fields. It publishes open-access, peer-reviewed articles and is organized in a tiered series of journals for evaluating the best research in the most democratic way.
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