Civilization and X-Com players may start petitioning for a scientific review of their profiles and abilities to adapt, now that science says gamers who engage in fast-paced games like Call of Duty and Battlefield are learning more quickly by YOLOing and fragging out.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences compared the performance of individuals who play action-based games and those who don't engage in fast-paced gaming.
The study corroborated previous research in proving that individuals who engage in fast-paced games are better learners, according to Daphne Bavelier, a professor who teaches and researches within the field of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester and the University of Geneva, Switzerland. These individuals become better learners by playing the action games, according to Bavelier.
"When they began the perceptual learning task, action video gamers were indistinguishable from nonaction gamers; they didn't come to the task with a better template," said Bavelier. "Instead, they developed better templates for the task, much, much faster, showing an accelerated learning curve."
The study found that action gamers developed better cognitive templates for executing the tasks put in front of them.
Researchers brought in individuals with little to no gaming experience and split the group into two sections that each spent 50 hours playing video games over nine weeks. One group played The Sims, a life-simulation video game, while the other spent its time with Call of Duty, an action shooter video game.
The two groups were tested in pattern discrimination and perceptual learning tasks before and after the 50 hours of video gaming. The action gamers beat out the group that played The Sims by establishing new templates for pattern discrimination and tweaking them much faster in the perceptual learning task.
The individuals who leveled up by playing Call of Duty kept their new abilities, as proven by follow-up tests that occurred several months after the first set of trials. Researchers found that the action-trained participants still outperformed the other participants when tested anywhere from several months to up to a year later, suggesting that they retained their ability to build better templates. The researchers are working on pinpointing what exactly boosted the action gamer's learning abilities, though they believe similar effects can be produced by other types of games.
"Games other than action video games may be able to have the same effect," Bevelier said. "They may need to be fast-paced, and require the player to divide his or her attention, and make predictions at different time scales."
The news that video games can actually boost learning skills comes on the heels of another study, which reaffirms that violent media doesn't carry its effects into the real world. Games and movies filled with violence don't make people violent in the real world, the study concluded.
