Playing action video games can improve learning skills

A new study has demonstrated that playing action video games on a regular basis can actually enhance learning skills of an individual.

Daphne Bavelier, a research professor in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, said that prior research by their group and others had shown that action gamers excel at many tasks. In this new study, they showed that they excelled because they were better learners and they become better learners by playing the fast-paced action games.

Bavelier continued that their brains kept predicting what will come next-, whether when listening to a conversation, driving, or even performing surgery and in order to sharpen its prediction skills, their brains constantly build models, or templates of the world.

Bavelier and her team first used a pattern discrimination task to compare action video game players' visual performance with that of individuals who did not play action video games.

The researchers also found that the action gamers' improved performance is a lasting effect. When tested several months to a year later, the action-trained participants still outperformed the other participants, suggesting that they retained their ability to build better templates.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.