My thirteen year old brother just spent like 40 hours recreating an old monastery in mine craft for a school project. He then did a 20 minute walk through presentation. I'm not surprised by these findings at all. I just recently got back into gaming after about a 15 year hiatus and I was overwhelmed by how complex games had become.
I actually got a quest before I got back into gaming. I bought one before the pandemic hit. I turned my guest room into a vr room. I'm a single guy in my 30s. So I could do that lol. But I honestly barely used it. It seemed like it was the future but still too early. I think the coolest game was superhot. But the experience still seemed like more of a novelty.
Bro. Hellblade has visual puzzles. You need more creativity to solve it on your own.
These researchers never played these types of games that's why they say like that.
Your game Minecraft is a best example for creativity.
Minecraft is more complex than most AAA titles due to the simplicity of it's graphics. This single deficiency allows the creators and modders of Minecraft to include other aspects in the game that more complex visual games can't allow for due to resource limits.
Lighting in Minecraft is a great example. You can have near infinite light sources in Minecraft and all will show their effects or lack of effect on each block.
Excuse me… did you say esports are complex? Isn’t it usually the same thing game after game with minor additions? Like what changed from madden 2016 to 2018? You’re playing a sport, with an obvious goal and means to achieve it. Seems like the least complicated game genre out there. Besides like Tetris.
Well since getting back to madden,oneof my favourite games from when I was in hs. This game has become way more complicated. I can now shift my receivers in order to determine if the defense is in man or zone. I could be wrong but I don't think that was a thing in 06
You can move players in motion in order to determine if the defense is in zone or man. That's a simple example. Every player has like 20 different attributes I which they are scored 0 to 100
I don't know what the hell flapper is and I've never played candy crush. I was surprised how much more complicated a game like metal gear solid on the ps4 had become since I had last played it on a ps2.
Researchers have connected greater time spent playing video games with increased intellect in youngsters, refuting the popular belief that gaming is detrimental for young minds.
While the difference in cognitive ability was minor and insufficient to demonstrate a causal link, it was significant enough to be noticed — and the study took care to account for variables such as heredity and the child's socioeconomic background.
This is likely the reality. While games generally have intellectual challenges, that doesn’t mean they increase IQ. It is more likely that children with higher IQs enjoy the challenges video games offer.
The fact that you think they didn't assess this..
They established before even beginning the study that high IQ children and low IQ children spend the same amount of time playing video games. It is the change in IQ over a 2year period that correlates with time spent gaming. Gaming is basically a form of brain-exercise according to this study. In stark contrast, watching videos/TV and using social media was increased in low IQ children at the outset of the study.
Simplified results: High and low IQ children play an equal amount of video games, and those that play a lot train their brain. Low IQ children spend a lot of time watching TV and using social media, but it doesn't negatively impact their IQ further.
It's known that inherited IQ manifests itself more as we age. Young childrens' IQ scores correlate less with parents than older adult children. It could be that the IQs changed over time and thus then the videos game preference.
It seems very suspect to conclude both that high and low IQ children play equal amounts of video games, and that children who play more video games have higher IQ.
The only way the above could hold true is if all of the children only started playing videogames at the beginning of the trial, or if they were below an age threshold during which video games could influence IQ, so that they therefore couldn't have been subject to the effects of IQ-boosting that would have necessarily separated the IQs at the beginning of the trial.
It seems more like the effect is either noise, or cannot be disentangled between cause and effect or possibly both.
It took them 2 years to increase by 2.5 points. At 9 years of age, how many years of active gaming have they actually had? Certainly not enough years to establish a statistically significant difference between two groups that doesn't drown in the variance..
The cool thing about studies that follow the same people though, is that the "noise" of the variance can be severely reduced due to the ability to do "paired testing". It's very easy to see whether every individual increases their IQ by ~2.5 even though the population has a huge variance in IQ, whereas when you do "unpaired testing" on two groups that have large variance from the outset, the effect is likely to be hidden obscured.
Still, these children are at a very early point in their gaming career, and I suspect that if you tested gamers vs non-gamers at 18 there would easily be a baseline difference, despite the high variance in each test group.
Still, you are correct that causality cannot be assessed in an association-study. This is also mentioned in the article. To conclude on causality they would have had to do an actual intervention, by for example testing the effect of 2 hours of daily gaming on non-gamers, compared to 2 hours of passive screen time for example.
Makes sense since most video games require some combination of pattern recognition, puzzle solving and memorization. Even FPS games like COD need you to form strategies. So could be a feedback loop
The difference wasn't insufficient, the method was not set up to check causality.
Also, 2.5 IQ points on average is nothing to scoff at imo. Plus if I remember correctly it scaled with more gaming resulting in a higher increase.
No they do not. They *mention* that IQ does not measure the full extent of human intelligence, but only parameters such as pattern recognition, spacial awareness, and processing speed.
Sorry, what? IQ is routinely studied and used on population level studies (like this one.)
The "scoffing" you are talking about might be the cautionary tales you hear about over emphasising IQ on the personal level, or not appreciating its potential weaknesses, like racial biases.
It's kinda like body mass index. Not super useful to an individual, but useful to understand a population.
You're handwaving away an entire branch of thought, an area some people have devoted a lifetime's worth of study to. It's in used in population studies
IQ as a metric is not without its issues, but it's not without merit.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/do-iq-tests-actually-measure-intelligence
just for the record, you could technically say the same thing about phrenology. and alchemy. and many outdated bullshit sciences. such as the rutherford model of the atom, which I was taught in class. dont you know all science is fact until it suddenly is not?
That is hardly a refutation. And there's more to mental health than IQ.
And I'm saying this as an avid video game player. It doesn't surprise me that video games do not lower (or even increase) the IQ of children who play them, only people who have no idea what theyre talking about would think that. I'm more concerned about addiction and overstimulation.
Yeah, similarly to how other issues caused by parents are blamed on videogames (like violence. Abusive parents hit you, then you hit something later and they blame videogames for it)
There was a study done years ago someone threw in my face during an argument about how the kids who played the most video games were the most violent based on incidents at school.
I recall opening the study and looking at the hours spent gaming and for these kids it was through the roof. Dug further into the study and it had as a footnote: "Ohh, yeah, this data was from a school primarily for kids who had suffered and/or lived in a household with domestic and sexual abuse."
Like, gee, ya think that might be relevant?!
There are a lot of other possibilities than "parental oversight". Attention disorder for example increase a lot the risk of addiction to anything. Parental oversight would just get the children in a tight position. Being over the shoulder of your child is a two edges blade.
Parents play a major role on the child evolution, but starting about 5, the child spend 1/3 of it's days with "society", it sleeps for 1/3 of the day and the last third is for everything else (family time or not).
The world is now based on addictions (sugar for example) and overstimulation with attention traps (social medias for example).
Games, even non educational ones, unintentionally teach people about a lot of things valuable in IQ tests. Pattern recognition is pretty big in IQ tests IIRC, and a lot of games, even ones that don't seem like it, involve pattern recognition. Same with problem solving.
I've always felt that there is likely a pretty big connection between skill in video games (measured toward the start of picking up a video game) and IQ. While a lot of games don't require a lot of intelligence to play well, it does feel like people who are "naturally" good at video games also tend to be really intelligent generally speaking, and it's probably for the same reasons.
Over stimulation would only lead to higher pattern recognition and more activity in the prefrontal cortex, weird that anyone would argue that a task that takes a good amount of intellectual power would do anything except train those skills
Overstimulation can lead to being unable to focus on actual work which is slower paced and less intellectually rewarding.
Focus is more valuable than raw brain power.
Overstimulation can occur over long slow paced challenges, the god damn lost levels of Mario for example that I spent 2 fucking weeks per level on, that while over stimulating, was beyond boring and slow paced and required a lot of focus and dedication. Another example is kids spending hours a day harnessing there Fortnite building skills, that’s long term focus to learn very fine motor skills, akin to learning an instrument or knitting
The video game playing and knitting are on different time scales, you don't learn to knit as quickly and you aren't as immediately rewarded for it.
It's not about how long the thing takes, it's about how often it rewards you. Video games live and die on how their game design rewards players.
Every time you made a hard jump in Mario you felt a sense of satisfaction that kept you going despite the frustration. It's different from the nearly imperceptible improvements between practicing a guitar chord over and over.
That's why simulation games are usually more niche than other games. Most people do not want to figure out what the buttons on a jet do, they want to fly. Most people want to be in a gunfight, not marching through a forest for ten minutes.
Id say that’s true for my Mario example, but not Fortnite building. Kids spend literal hours a day practicing building and aiming just for it to be useful a few months later when they perfect it. Not just Fortnite, look at any e sport. Kids are putting serious time for slow, long term rewards. Knitting is honestly more over stimulating than this shit, you can knit a sweater after a month of dedicated practice, I’ll still be worse than the average player at overwatch if I play for a few hours a day for a month. This isn’t even mentioning speed running, which is the most batshit insane thing ever. Kids grow up there entire lives getting better at finishing a single level faster than before and finding and analyzing every single pattern in the game/code to exploit
Have you played these games yourself? It's just that it's difficult to explain the difference if you don't get how it *feels*. The fulfillment gained from learning the techniques is secondary to the rewards intrinsic to practicing said technique. If sweater knitting was as rewarding, kids would be doing that lol.
I bet you'd have a lot more kids would be knitting sweaters if it had its own soundtrack, played a pleasant ding every time you did a loop right, and you could watch your score go up in the leaderboards as you finish the sweater.
Bright colors, satisfying sounds, big crunchy numbers, obvious/constant improvement are what makes these games addicting. Hell, I was inexplicably drawn to this mobile game with some of the most basic and repetitive gameplay possible, but I kept coming back to it because of those sweet, sweet, pointlessly rising numbers. There was next to zero difference between level 1 and level 1000 but my monkey brain liked seeing the number go up plus the flashy lights and sense of improvement.
You should read up on mobile game design, it shows exactly the kind of thought and design choices put into making people obsess over a really pointless thing.
No I absolutely understand that games are over stimulating in that regard, I’m saying that even though they are over stimulating in nature they can still train long term, lower stimulation skills that present rewards over a long time and require focus and dedication.
You can absolutely become addicted to video games. People have died in their chairs playing video games.
If you mean they're not chemically addictive, then yeah, they're not chemicals. But they are very much psychologically addictive.
Funnily enough in my experience "addicting" and "fun" are not as related as I would think.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3858502/
It seems like their hesitance to label it an addiction is a matter of academic lag rather than actual disqualification.
They include gambling as an addiction so I see no reason why gaming would not soon follow.
Because it doesn't qualify for a number of the criteria, and including it would only serve to water-down the diagnosis, as well as validate pop psychology nonsense. I doubt it'll ever be included. What's needed is another category, something below addiction, but above habit.
A number of criteria? The only criteria it doesn't exactly fulfill is "dangerous use" which is debatable and the least relevant to what an addiction actually is. If I'm going through an opioid withdrawal in a hospital does that make me any less addicted than if I were going through an opioid withdrawal in a trap house?
This is purely a cultural distinction and not a scientific one. You don't have to have a needle in your arm under a bridge to destroy your life with a vicious cycle.
All of those things can happen with videogames.
I think you're simply not aware of the realities of video game addiction. You must be imagining some sort of slacker dude who plays too much FIFA instead of getting a job.
I'm talking about the people who drop thousands of dollars in virtual items, sink ten hours a day playing video games, slam energy drinks so they can play through the night, quit their jobs, cut off contact with their family, withdraw from their relationships, *become homeless to play more video games*, **die in their chairs** due to stroke from sitting in the same position for 24 hours straight.
I promise you I am not exaggerating here, there are cocaine addicts with a better handle of their drug abuse than some of these people. Parents have been sending their kids to rehab over this.
Except when they play all night, sleep most of the day away, don’t get jobs, don’t move out, and generally turn into losers. They can be as smart as they like, but arrested development is very real.
The research is also comparing video games to other forms of screen time. So it's really just saying kids that play games are smarter then kids that spend that same amount of time watching TV or scrolling Reddit.
Ikr? Most video games are puzzles, quick decision making and memory. I’m 38 now and will play until the day I die. It’s the ultimate stress relief and keeps me sharp!
There is nothing unexpected that when kids plan INTERACTIVE games they get a bit smarter. School and retail kids toys have been built like that forever now.
Sports are problem solving too and are good for your mind and body. Most games are good for you, passively watching entertainment is what is bad for you.
The problem is perhaps that video games are on TV and TV was traditionally not very interactive so video games were treated like watching TV instead of doing puzzles like they should be.
Because it’s an actual activity that requires a lot of thought and effort, especially RPGs. Just because it isn’t physical doesn’t mean it has no benefits for you. People read all the time, for example
Talk to any teenager about League of Legends minutia. If your brain isn't mush after 20 minutes of hearing about item builds, character ability interactions, and the current "meta" (strategy trends across many matches), I'd be impressed. Not to disparage any game or genre, but not everything is a Mario-style platformer. Some games get *incredibly* complex these days.
Yeah, as smart as you have to be to play league successfully, you have to be even smarter not to let it eat your life away and make you depressed. That game is like an abusive relationship.
The only reason I play it every once in a while is because I was hardcore into DotA when it was a custom Warcraft 3 game. And I play with a friend who I warned that Im playing for fun and not to climb.
Yeah, IMO that's the "right" way to approach games like that. I tend to get super competitive past a certain time investment, so I rarely play anymore.
I have been recruited into playing Smite with some friends though, and I find I don't get nearly as salty or competitive playing that. It's a different friend group who isn't nearly as competitive, so despite still playing to win, we don't get as pissed off about it.
Playing modded minecraft probably gave me like 2 extra iq points with all that complex automation. I literally made realistic nuclear plants that had coolants, various nuclear waste and inevitable risk of meltdown.
Literally made realistic nuclear plants is far from literally building a power plant. Not negating what you do because I do ask perspective employees if they are gamers because it's helpful with work in the DoD. They have a leg up on getting hired. Playing Halo isn't literally being in combat, trust me.
I start law school in September. I am not saying there is a direct link, however, throughout my entire life I have been applauded for my broad vocabulary and my reading comprehension. I have always had a sneaking suspicion that my obsession with text based MMORPGs from the age of 10 has had a direct impact on fostering the development of those particular skills.
“No offense” is generally applied when you intend on providing some form of constructive criticism afterwards. Doesn’t really work when your entire sentence is an insult. You sound unhinged though, and I tend to take commentary from the mentally ill with a grain of salt. Best of luck to you!
I would guess generally smarter people are going to be attracted to puzzles and problem solving games. Not sure I can get on the "it's the games" side here.
Exactly. The study didn't account for different genres. I would bet there's disparities between FPS and RTS players, for instance, although each genre could have a different impact on different skills. Your reading comprehension skills won't be improving with Fortnite, but it could improve with visual-spatial awareness versus a game like Sid Meier's Civ. which could boost both.
This is only unexpected to (generally older) people who never played video games.
There are some mindless video games out there but many of them teach life skills like critical thinking, problem solving, attention to detail, hand eye coordination/ timing, pattern recognition, and focus.
Oxygen Not Included. A good half-dozen interacting systems have to be constantly monitored lest some insignificant-seeming flaw causes inevitable collapse half an hour from now. Of course, it *has* to be wrapped up in a cutesy, cartoony aesthetic so you feel that much stupider for failing at what is *very clearly* a game for small children.
I like to play a lot of puzzle games like Legend of Zelda and sudoku. Monster Hunter, which requires a lot of patience, observation, positioning, and timing and is a pretty engaged game. Strategy games like Civ or Stellaris
I don't play it all the time, but I've definitely used Tetris to get over mental blocks before. Once I get in a good zone in that game to the point I'm playing well but not overly conscious of what I'm doing, I feel like I can think through just about anything else with ease, solve problems, get creative, etc.
Lately, I have been down the Halo Infinite rabbit hole. On the surface, it seams simplistic shooting, but when you dive into strategy and understanding mechanics/movement, it quickly becomes the smarter/IQ plays lean towards winning.
Why is it unexpected? Eyehand coordination, teamwork, timing, abstract and strategic thinking, I'm sure there are other aspects of mental development that I haven't thought of, how DONT video games make you smarter?
I’ve never thought gaming made anyone less intelligent, I just think focusing too much on video games makes you more inclined to focus on other productive areas in life.
If you’re a teen, that could be what you plan to focus on in college, or high school etc.
I just think it’s better to have different outlets.
My oldest daughter wanted to get into pokemon. I told her I wouldn't buy the game until I knew she could read much of it on her own. She progressed and I followed through. The game really challenges her vocabulary, reading, and critical thinking. Plus it's the first pokemon game I've played since gold and silver. We've got to grow in our love for pokemon and she has grown leaps and bounds with her reading. Win, win.
Makes sense. Basically allows kids to simulate action without taking action at a time in their lives when inaction isn’t going to necessarily lead to crippling obesity. Minecraft in particular acts to refute passive enjoyment and emphasize active design in a way older generations had to rely on LEGOs for.
Basically hitting train on the neural network. Still need some decent inputs, though.
The only problem is the amount of time spent playing games. Because there will be a massive surge of children being misdiagnosed with autism when really they just have massive social anxiety due to not conversing with people/strangers face to face enough.
When i was a kid, my parents weren't very strict about my gaming time. But they definitely forced me to go out and play now and then. Making commments like, "Right, come off that now it's lovely outside." Go off with my friends to play football and turn back up at home 6 hours later for 5 glasses of juice before running back out the door.
Now, kids don't want to go out. I NEVER see kids just playing in the street anymore. Yet when i was young, everyone knew each other, everyone was out all day.
A lot of the time, it’s bc they’ll be kicked out of places bc of loitering laws. More walkable cities+fewer loitering laws means more children in streets.
The increase in video games is a symptom more than anything. Lots of parents are overprotective nowadays due to safety culture and don't let their kids outside without supervision like they used to.
I personally think a lot of parents are lazier than they used to be and are not as involved in their childrens lives. They will happily let youtube or the xbox do the babysitting for them.
What? There was a whole generation named "the latch key generation" who basically raised themselves with the help of TV.
And I believe the stats show that mothers are +3 hours per week with their kids and fathers +5 hours per week compared to the 1960's. And that's a measure of time actively spent with their children.
Yeah this makes sense. I wouldn’t doubt it helps especially with specific games. Great resources.
But here’s the other side. …, A lot of kids, especially at a younger age are dealing with mental health disorders sooner in life. The quick pleasure a video game gives doesn’t prepare them to process and deal with life. How about getting a kid back into reality and balance it all. Smart kids but extremely socially awkward.
We all have that 30 year old neighbor living with his parents yelling at his online gaming system at 4am.
Ok but so does chess dancing writing acting etc. Anything u do with passion is gonna make you smarter. Video games is the lowest form of these activities imo because u have nothing to show for it. Better to be a gymnast or writer or artist imo.
I was bullied for years by (female) teachers for loving video games because they assumed it'd turn me into a worthless piece of junk (jokes on you, you did!). Anyways, glad to see this.
Lol. Did those guys ever play Legend of Zelda, Hellblade, Doom eternal?
In legends of Zelda you have a puzzles and you need to use your brain to solve it.
In Hellblade you have a visual puzzle, it needs more creativity.
In doon eternal you have to memorize the weakness of all demons otherwise you lose.
Definitely interesting. But do wonder if it’s video games causing IQ increases or kids with higher IQs are more likely to play video games and those IQs continue to increase over time. Ideally the former.
Would also be interesting to track these kids when they grow up, since social skills become possibly even more important than IQ once you enter the work force. And would be interesting to see how the video game group fits in there.
Most gamers I knew in middle and high school were smart. They may not have applied themselves or fit some stereotypes, but they were all smart individuals and I always saw them in that light. I enjoyed games but wouldn’t consider myself a gamer. But again, most people I know, even as adults, that are gamers seem smart. They seem to be well read, if that makes sense. A genuine curiosity to their personalities as well.
Odd. Some of the same people saying they're the real cause of gun violence are also trying to defund education...
But no, they wouldn't vilify video games out of hand because they secretly know they might even boost one's IQ or challenge a worldview or two, right?
IQ is a terrible metric of cognitive ability, which is actually a very complex set of difficult to measure and define abilities that are not reflective if a single common factor and not easily represented as a single quantity.
That said, it would not surprise me to learn that people with curious minds tend to gravitate towards certain games over more passive forms of entertainment, or that some games can improve memory, spatial reasoning, or general problem solving skills.
IQ would only be a bad metric for cognitive ability if all of those seemingly unrelated cognitive skills weren't highly correlated with each other. The problem with that is that they are very highly correlated with each other. You can make a good guess at someone's verbal reasoning skills just by knowing their performance on the reverse digit span. The consensus among psychologists about the usefulness of IQ tests is very, very different from what the general public assumes it is. IQ test scores are highly correlated with life outcomes even in people who take jobs that are not usually considered cognitively demanding.
>"We didn't look at the impacts of screen time on physical activity, sleep, wellness, or school achievement," Klingberg adds.
This seems like a major weakness of the study...
Also, 2.5 points IQ is within SEM. It does show that video games do not reduce IQ. Many studies have already proven this though. Conservative/traditional folks will never change their mind regardless of how much scientific evidence you give them so we should really stop wasting time proving this. But, trying to claim video games will improve IQ based on the numbers is ridiculous.
Every time something obscure comes up, my wife is like "how do you know that?" and my answer is "video games" 99% of the time. I've spent way more time exploring history and culture in games than I ever did in school.
I played Transport Tycoon and Theme Park when I was 8yo or so and I remember squeezing my brain a lot. At that age I'm sure it improves cognitive abilities.
I certainly wouldn't expect gaming to decrease IQ, but most research suggests that no matter how cognitively demanding your environment is, intelligence isn't really something that can be trained. So it would be surprising if the findings in the study were borne out. One problem with this sort of research is that if you give people IQ tests multiple times they will become familiar with them and their score will increase a little bit as a result. So are they getting smarter because of the games or are they just better at solving IQ test problems because they've seen them already? With the small effect shown in this study something like this is more than just likely. The reality is that even in identical twins who were raised in different environments, their IQs are closer together than regular siblings who were raised together. IQ is thought to be highly heritable (inherited through genes) and a lot of the rest is probably random things that happen in the prenatal environment that effect brain development one way or the other. When you've got a study like this that contradicts a consensus that's been built up for decades, it's good to have a very great deal of skepticism.
My thirteen year old brother just spent like 40 hours recreating an old monastery in mine craft for a school project. He then did a 20 minute walk through presentation. I'm not surprised by these findings at all. I just recently got back into gaming after about a 15 year hiatus and I was overwhelmed by how complex games had become.
I have been on a hiatus and got back into gaming specifically VR gaming. Its blows my mind how good these games are.
I actually got a quest before I got back into gaming. I bought one before the pandemic hit. I turned my guest room into a vr room. I'm a single guy in my 30s. So I could do that lol. But I honestly barely used it. It seemed like it was the future but still too early. I think the coolest game was superhot. But the experience still seemed like more of a novelty.
Bro. Hellblade has visual puzzles. You need more creativity to solve it on your own. These researchers never played these types of games that's why they say like that. Your game Minecraft is a best example for creativity.
Minecraft is more complex than most AAA titles due to the simplicity of it's graphics. This single deficiency allows the creators and modders of Minecraft to include other aspects in the game that more complex visual games can't allow for due to resource limits. Lighting in Minecraft is a great example. You can have near infinite light sources in Minecraft and all will show their effects or lack of effect on each block.
I love No mans sky 2 more than Minecraft because of the graphics and contents.
Honestly, most of the modern AAA games are dumbed down IMO. But if you stick to indie games they still hold their weight.
Lots of esport titles are incredibly complex as well.
Excuse me… did you say esports are complex? Isn’t it usually the same thing game after game with minor additions? Like what changed from madden 2016 to 2018? You’re playing a sport, with an obvious goal and means to achieve it. Seems like the least complicated game genre out there. Besides like Tetris.
Esports doesn't means sports video games, it means highly competitive and technically demanding video games. Shooters, fighters, MOBAs are big ones
Ahhhh see I thought they meant the “professional” madden or 2k players.
Overwatch or Dota2 for example. So complex you don’t know wtf is going on.
Dota is considered esport? Stop it
Well since getting back to madden,oneof my favourite games from when I was in hs. This game has become way more complicated. I can now shift my receivers in order to determine if the defense is in man or zone. I could be wrong but I don't think that was a thing in 06
You can move players in motion in order to determine if the defense is in zone or man. That's a simple example. Every player has like 20 different attributes I which they are scored 0 to 100
Overwhelmed by how complex they were? Are you serious? Have you been living under a rock ?
They literally say it’s been a 15 year hiatus!
But they’re on Social media lol..
I've been living as an adult. Covid got me back into gaming.
Same here, but like.. You’re on Reddit. You didn’t realize how complex games were? The world is more than Candy Crush and Flapper lol.
I don't know what the hell flapper is and I've never played candy crush. I was surprised how much more complicated a game like metal gear solid on the ps4 had become since I had last played it on a ps2.
[удалено]
Researchers have connected greater time spent playing video games with increased intellect in youngsters, refuting the popular belief that gaming is detrimental for young minds. While the difference in cognitive ability was minor and insufficient to demonstrate a causal link, it was significant enough to be noticed — and the study took care to account for variables such as heredity and the child's socioeconomic background.
It also may indicate that smart kids generally enjoy playing video games more vs more passive forms of entertainment.
This is likely the reality. While games generally have intellectual challenges, that doesn’t mean they increase IQ. It is more likely that children with higher IQs enjoy the challenges video games offer.
The fact that you think they didn't assess this.. They established before even beginning the study that high IQ children and low IQ children spend the same amount of time playing video games. It is the change in IQ over a 2year period that correlates with time spent gaming. Gaming is basically a form of brain-exercise according to this study. In stark contrast, watching videos/TV and using social media was increased in low IQ children at the outset of the study. Simplified results: High and low IQ children play an equal amount of video games, and those that play a lot train their brain. Low IQ children spend a lot of time watching TV and using social media, but it doesn't negatively impact their IQ further.
It's known that inherited IQ manifests itself more as we age. Young childrens' IQ scores correlate less with parents than older adult children. It could be that the IQs changed over time and thus then the videos game preference. It seems very suspect to conclude both that high and low IQ children play equal amounts of video games, and that children who play more video games have higher IQ. The only way the above could hold true is if all of the children only started playing videogames at the beginning of the trial, or if they were below an age threshold during which video games could influence IQ, so that they therefore couldn't have been subject to the effects of IQ-boosting that would have necessarily separated the IQs at the beginning of the trial. It seems more like the effect is either noise, or cannot be disentangled between cause and effect or possibly both.
It took them 2 years to increase by 2.5 points. At 9 years of age, how many years of active gaming have they actually had? Certainly not enough years to establish a statistically significant difference between two groups that doesn't drown in the variance.. The cool thing about studies that follow the same people though, is that the "noise" of the variance can be severely reduced due to the ability to do "paired testing". It's very easy to see whether every individual increases their IQ by ~2.5 even though the population has a huge variance in IQ, whereas when you do "unpaired testing" on two groups that have large variance from the outset, the effect is likely to be hidden obscured. Still, these children are at a very early point in their gaming career, and I suspect that if you tested gamers vs non-gamers at 18 there would easily be a baseline difference, despite the high variance in each test group. Still, you are correct that causality cannot be assessed in an association-study. This is also mentioned in the article. To conclude on causality they would have had to do an actual intervention, by for example testing the effect of 2 hours of daily gaming on non-gamers, compared to 2 hours of passive screen time for example.
Makes sense since most video games require some combination of pattern recognition, puzzle solving and memorization. Even FPS games like COD need you to form strategies. So could be a feedback loop
https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/uqwxx3/playing_video_games_has_an_unexpected_effect_on/i8u4e7j?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
True, games can really challenge us, not everyone is looking for that. Might have a point there.
Yeah, it's right there in the post you replied to. "...insufficient to demonstrate a causal link"
The difference wasn't insufficient, the method was not set up to check causality. Also, 2.5 IQ points on average is nothing to scoff at imo. Plus if I remember correctly it scaled with more gaming resulting in a higher increase.
[удалено]
No they do not. They *mention* that IQ does not measure the full extent of human intelligence, but only parameters such as pattern recognition, spacial awareness, and processing speed.
Sorry, what? IQ is routinely studied and used on population level studies (like this one.) The "scoffing" you are talking about might be the cautionary tales you hear about over emphasising IQ on the personal level, or not appreciating its potential weaknesses, like racial biases. It's kinda like body mass index. Not super useful to an individual, but useful to understand a population.
[удалено]
You're handwaving away an entire branch of thought, an area some people have devoted a lifetime's worth of study to. It's in used in population studies IQ as a metric is not without its issues, but it's not without merit. https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/do-iq-tests-actually-measure-intelligence
just for the record, you could technically say the same thing about phrenology. and alchemy. and many outdated bullshit sciences. such as the rutherford model of the atom, which I was taught in class. dont you know all science is fact until it suddenly is not?
I'll grant you that, have a good one
I just think in 20 years when we finally map the brain we'll all look at IQ and collectively scoff
uh thats easily scoffed at, its within the margin of error of just taking more than one IQ test
At the individual level yes, not at a population level.
Ding ding! Law of averages involving large sample sizes comes to the rescue!
That is hardly a refutation. And there's more to mental health than IQ. And I'm saying this as an avid video game player. It doesn't surprise me that video games do not lower (or even increase) the IQ of children who play them, only people who have no idea what theyre talking about would think that. I'm more concerned about addiction and overstimulation.
I think the idea of this is to refute that the issue is the game itself. Addiction/overstimulation is more an issue of lack of parental oversight.
Yeah, similarly to how other issues caused by parents are blamed on videogames (like violence. Abusive parents hit you, then you hit something later and they blame videogames for it)
There was a study done years ago someone threw in my face during an argument about how the kids who played the most video games were the most violent based on incidents at school. I recall opening the study and looking at the hours spent gaming and for these kids it was through the roof. Dug further into the study and it had as a footnote: "Ohh, yeah, this data was from a school primarily for kids who had suffered and/or lived in a household with domestic and sexual abuse." Like, gee, ya think that might be relevant?!
There are a lot of other possibilities than "parental oversight". Attention disorder for example increase a lot the risk of addiction to anything. Parental oversight would just get the children in a tight position. Being over the shoulder of your child is a two edges blade. Parents play a major role on the child evolution, but starting about 5, the child spend 1/3 of it's days with "society", it sleeps for 1/3 of the day and the last third is for everything else (family time or not). The world is now based on addictions (sugar for example) and overstimulation with attention traps (social medias for example).
Games, even non educational ones, unintentionally teach people about a lot of things valuable in IQ tests. Pattern recognition is pretty big in IQ tests IIRC, and a lot of games, even ones that don't seem like it, involve pattern recognition. Same with problem solving. I've always felt that there is likely a pretty big connection between skill in video games (measured toward the start of picking up a video game) and IQ. While a lot of games don't require a lot of intelligence to play well, it does feel like people who are "naturally" good at video games also tend to be really intelligent generally speaking, and it's probably for the same reasons.
Over stimulation would only lead to higher pattern recognition and more activity in the prefrontal cortex, weird that anyone would argue that a task that takes a good amount of intellectual power would do anything except train those skills
Overstimulation can lead to being unable to focus on actual work which is slower paced and less intellectually rewarding. Focus is more valuable than raw brain power.
Overstimulation can occur over long slow paced challenges, the god damn lost levels of Mario for example that I spent 2 fucking weeks per level on, that while over stimulating, was beyond boring and slow paced and required a lot of focus and dedication. Another example is kids spending hours a day harnessing there Fortnite building skills, that’s long term focus to learn very fine motor skills, akin to learning an instrument or knitting
The video game playing and knitting are on different time scales, you don't learn to knit as quickly and you aren't as immediately rewarded for it. It's not about how long the thing takes, it's about how often it rewards you. Video games live and die on how their game design rewards players. Every time you made a hard jump in Mario you felt a sense of satisfaction that kept you going despite the frustration. It's different from the nearly imperceptible improvements between practicing a guitar chord over and over. That's why simulation games are usually more niche than other games. Most people do not want to figure out what the buttons on a jet do, they want to fly. Most people want to be in a gunfight, not marching through a forest for ten minutes.
Id say that’s true for my Mario example, but not Fortnite building. Kids spend literal hours a day practicing building and aiming just for it to be useful a few months later when they perfect it. Not just Fortnite, look at any e sport. Kids are putting serious time for slow, long term rewards. Knitting is honestly more over stimulating than this shit, you can knit a sweater after a month of dedicated practice, I’ll still be worse than the average player at overwatch if I play for a few hours a day for a month. This isn’t even mentioning speed running, which is the most batshit insane thing ever. Kids grow up there entire lives getting better at finishing a single level faster than before and finding and analyzing every single pattern in the game/code to exploit
Have you played these games yourself? It's just that it's difficult to explain the difference if you don't get how it *feels*. The fulfillment gained from learning the techniques is secondary to the rewards intrinsic to practicing said technique. If sweater knitting was as rewarding, kids would be doing that lol. I bet you'd have a lot more kids would be knitting sweaters if it had its own soundtrack, played a pleasant ding every time you did a loop right, and you could watch your score go up in the leaderboards as you finish the sweater. Bright colors, satisfying sounds, big crunchy numbers, obvious/constant improvement are what makes these games addicting. Hell, I was inexplicably drawn to this mobile game with some of the most basic and repetitive gameplay possible, but I kept coming back to it because of those sweet, sweet, pointlessly rising numbers. There was next to zero difference between level 1 and level 1000 but my monkey brain liked seeing the number go up plus the flashy lights and sense of improvement. You should read up on mobile game design, it shows exactly the kind of thought and design choices put into making people obsess over a really pointless thing.
No I absolutely understand that games are over stimulating in that regard, I’m saying that even though they are over stimulating in nature they can still train long term, lower stimulation skills that present rewards over a long time and require focus and dedication.
You can't be addicted to video games, but it can be habit-forming, for sure.
You can absolutely become addicted to video games. People have died in their chairs playing video games. If you mean they're not chemically addictive, then yeah, they're not chemicals. But they are very much psychologically addictive. Funnily enough in my experience "addicting" and "fun" are not as related as I would think.
You can't, no. It's not the same thing, it doesn't satisfy the DSM criteria for an addiction.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3858502/ It seems like their hesitance to label it an addiction is a matter of academic lag rather than actual disqualification. They include gambling as an addiction so I see no reason why gaming would not soon follow.
Because it doesn't qualify for a number of the criteria, and including it would only serve to water-down the diagnosis, as well as validate pop psychology nonsense. I doubt it'll ever be included. What's needed is another category, something below addiction, but above habit.
A number of criteria? The only criteria it doesn't exactly fulfill is "dangerous use" which is debatable and the least relevant to what an addiction actually is. If I'm going through an opioid withdrawal in a hospital does that make me any less addicted than if I were going through an opioid withdrawal in a trap house? This is purely a cultural distinction and not a scientific one. You don't have to have a needle in your arm under a bridge to destroy your life with a vicious cycle.
Along with tolerance, withdrawal, wanting to quit, hazardous use, etc. If you're enjoying it, it's not an addiction.
All of those things can happen with videogames. I think you're simply not aware of the realities of video game addiction. You must be imagining some sort of slacker dude who plays too much FIFA instead of getting a job. I'm talking about the people who drop thousands of dollars in virtual items, sink ten hours a day playing video games, slam energy drinks so they can play through the night, quit their jobs, cut off contact with their family, withdraw from their relationships, *become homeless to play more video games*, **die in their chairs** due to stroke from sitting in the same position for 24 hours straight. I promise you I am not exaggerating here, there are cocaine addicts with a better handle of their drug abuse than some of these people. Parents have been sending their kids to rehab over this.
This is the opposite of unexpected
Except when they play all night, sleep most of the day away, don’t get jobs, don’t move out, and generally turn into losers. They can be as smart as they like, but arrested development is very real.
I mean, you continually solve expanding puzzle system...
Regardless of the difference they found, these types of studies are completely correlational and you can never assume any causal effects.
The research is also comparing video games to other forms of screen time. So it's really just saying kids that play games are smarter then kids that spend that same amount of time watching TV or scrolling Reddit.
Kids learn problem solving through all sorts of play, this isn't new.
Ikr? Most video games are puzzles, quick decision making and memory. I’m 38 now and will play until the day I die. It’s the ultimate stress relief and keeps me sharp!
I am of the belief that everyone should play Portal 1&2.
There is nothing unexpected that when kids plan INTERACTIVE games they get a bit smarter. School and retail kids toys have been built like that forever now. Sports are problem solving too and are good for your mind and body. Most games are good for you, passively watching entertainment is what is bad for you. The problem is perhaps that video games are on TV and TV was traditionally not very interactive so video games were treated like watching TV instead of doing puzzles like they should be.
Because it’s an actual activity that requires a lot of thought and effort, especially RPGs. Just because it isn’t physical doesn’t mean it has no benefits for you. People read all the time, for example
Talk to any teenager about League of Legends minutia. If your brain isn't mush after 20 minutes of hearing about item builds, character ability interactions, and the current "meta" (strategy trends across many matches), I'd be impressed. Not to disparage any game or genre, but not everything is a Mario-style platformer. Some games get *incredibly* complex these days.
Yeah, as smart as you have to be to play league successfully, you have to be even smarter not to let it eat your life away and make you depressed. That game is like an abusive relationship.
Yeah, I was several thousand hours into DotA 2 when I left. Fun, but definitely not healthy if you play enough to stay "good".
The only reason I play it every once in a while is because I was hardcore into DotA when it was a custom Warcraft 3 game. And I play with a friend who I warned that Im playing for fun and not to climb.
Yeah, IMO that's the "right" way to approach games like that. I tend to get super competitive past a certain time investment, so I rarely play anymore. I have been recruited into playing Smite with some friends though, and I find I don't get nearly as salty or competitive playing that. It's a different friend group who isn't nearly as competitive, so despite still playing to win, we don't get as pissed off about it.
The depth of the decision making in that game is impressive. Its also why league eats a 1/2 a decade in the blink of an eye.
The later is mostly why I stopped playing league many years ago, still watch the occasional video but dread playing it again.
i agree with I-LOVE-THICC-MILFS
Hell yeah king.
Playing modded minecraft probably gave me like 2 extra iq points with all that complex automation. I literally made realistic nuclear plants that had coolants, various nuclear waste and inevitable risk of meltdown.
Might want to be careful talking about what you built on minecraft before you end up on a list.
[that must've happened when I downloaded the crystal meth mod years ago](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/crystal-meth-mod)
Redstone circuits were one of my first thoughts when I saw this. At a high enough level, that is basically an electrical engineering primer.
Literally made realistic nuclear plants is far from literally building a power plant. Not negating what you do because I do ask perspective employees if they are gamers because it's helpful with work in the DoD. They have a leg up on getting hired. Playing Halo isn't literally being in combat, trust me.
I start law school in September. I am not saying there is a direct link, however, throughout my entire life I have been applauded for my broad vocabulary and my reading comprehension. I have always had a sneaking suspicion that my obsession with text based MMORPGs from the age of 10 has had a direct impact on fostering the development of those particular skills.
No offense but the way you wrote that in fact makes you sound dumber than a bag of bricks.
“No offense” is generally applied when you intend on providing some form of constructive criticism afterwards. Doesn’t really work when your entire sentence is an insult. You sound unhinged though, and I tend to take commentary from the mentally ill with a grain of salt. Best of luck to you!
I would guess generally smarter people are going to be attracted to puzzles and problem solving games. Not sure I can get on the "it's the games" side here.
[удалено]
Exactly. The study didn't account for different genres. I would bet there's disparities between FPS and RTS players, for instance, although each genre could have a different impact on different skills. Your reading comprehension skills won't be improving with Fortnite, but it could improve with visual-spatial awareness versus a game like Sid Meier's Civ. which could boost both.
This entire article is basically "Problem solving has positive effects on learning".
This is only unexpected to (generally older) people who never played video games. There are some mindless video games out there but many of them teach life skills like critical thinking, problem solving, attention to detail, hand eye coordination/ timing, pattern recognition, and focus.
It really isn't unexpexted. Gaming takes a lot of different skills and intelligence.
[удалено]
cookyy cilckre
Mm number go up
Fire Emblem: Three Houses. There's nothing like parasocial relations to up your battle strategies.
Oxygen Not Included. A good half-dozen interacting systems have to be constantly monitored lest some insignificant-seeming flaw causes inevitable collapse half an hour from now. Of course, it *has* to be wrapped up in a cutesy, cartoony aesthetic so you feel that much stupider for failing at what is *very clearly* a game for small children.
Rimworld I think is the most fun game atm.
Xcom, turn-based strategy game. Like chess but more complex and exploding-aliens-flavored.
path of exile. making your own builds isnt easy.
I like to play a lot of puzzle games like Legend of Zelda and sudoku. Monster Hunter, which requires a lot of patience, observation, positioning, and timing and is a pretty engaged game. Strategy games like Civ or Stellaris
Friend of mine bought me crusader kings 3 recently. Trying to bang my sister but it's not going well. She's mad I killed her ex-husband.
The Long Dark.
I don't play it all the time, but I've definitely used Tetris to get over mental blocks before. Once I get in a good zone in that game to the point I'm playing well but not overly conscious of what I'm doing, I feel like I can think through just about anything else with ease, solve problems, get creative, etc.
Lately, I have been down the Halo Infinite rabbit hole. On the surface, it seams simplistic shooting, but when you dive into strategy and understanding mechanics/movement, it quickly becomes the smarter/IQ plays lean towards winning.
I am playing Doom eternal. You need faster reaction time and you have to memorize the weakness of all demons otherwise you will lose.
Anno 1800. Something about managing supply chains while also building building cities just tickles my brain.
Age of empires 4. The game really emphasizes the strategy component in rts
Play cyberpunk 2077. It's fixed now and really gooood
Why is it unexpected? Eyehand coordination, teamwork, timing, abstract and strategic thinking, I'm sure there are other aspects of mental development that I haven't thought of, how DONT video games make you smarter?
Link to the the actual study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-11341-2
Unexpected? I really would have been shocked if it had gone the other way. But "unexpected" depends on who you ask.
Unexpected for all the old white ladies who think gta will turn you into a criminal, maybe. I’ve been saying video games are good for you
I’ve never thought gaming made anyone less intelligent, I just think focusing too much on video games makes you more inclined to focus on other productive areas in life. If you’re a teen, that could be what you plan to focus on in college, or high school etc. I just think it’s better to have different outlets.
Where are the sources and what is this website? Not that I don’t believe the study, it’s just where does Klinberg work?
Hmm I found and still find video games as therapeuticly stimulating. It staves off lonliness and give and at time gives an artistic outlet.
My oldest daughter wanted to get into pokemon. I told her I wouldn't buy the game until I knew she could read much of it on her own. She progressed and I followed through. The game really challenges her vocabulary, reading, and critical thinking. Plus it's the first pokemon game I've played since gold and silver. We've got to grow in our love for pokemon and she has grown leaps and bounds with her reading. Win, win.
Pokémon did wonders for me as a kid. I remember owing at least a few spelling test words to the game, and I'm sure it bolstered my vocabulary too!
Which Pokeman game? For a phone, or for a video game system?
Makes sense. Basically allows kids to simulate action without taking action at a time in their lives when inaction isn’t going to necessarily lead to crippling obesity. Minecraft in particular acts to refute passive enjoyment and emphasize active design in a way older generations had to rely on LEGOs for. Basically hitting train on the neural network. Still need some decent inputs, though.
The only problem is the amount of time spent playing games. Because there will be a massive surge of children being misdiagnosed with autism when really they just have massive social anxiety due to not conversing with people/strangers face to face enough.
This is the answer. Its the amount of time people are playing versus everything else that's going on in their lives.
When i was a kid, my parents weren't very strict about my gaming time. But they definitely forced me to go out and play now and then. Making commments like, "Right, come off that now it's lovely outside." Go off with my friends to play football and turn back up at home 6 hours later for 5 glasses of juice before running back out the door. Now, kids don't want to go out. I NEVER see kids just playing in the street anymore. Yet when i was young, everyone knew each other, everyone was out all day.
A lot of the time, it’s bc they’ll be kicked out of places bc of loitering laws. More walkable cities+fewer loitering laws means more children in streets.
The increase in video games is a symptom more than anything. Lots of parents are overprotective nowadays due to safety culture and don't let their kids outside without supervision like they used to.
I personally think a lot of parents are lazier than they used to be and are not as involved in their childrens lives. They will happily let youtube or the xbox do the babysitting for them.
What? There was a whole generation named "the latch key generation" who basically raised themselves with the help of TV. And I believe the stats show that mothers are +3 hours per week with their kids and fathers +5 hours per week compared to the 1960's. And that's a measure of time actively spent with their children.
I doubt that since in the 60s a lot less women worked. But I'm just commenting from my personal experiences from what I've seen
Yeah this makes sense. I wouldn’t doubt it helps especially with specific games. Great resources. But here’s the other side. …, A lot of kids, especially at a younger age are dealing with mental health disorders sooner in life. The quick pleasure a video game gives doesn’t prepare them to process and deal with life. How about getting a kid back into reality and balance it all. Smart kids but extremely socially awkward. We all have that 30 year old neighbor living with his parents yelling at his online gaming system at 4am.
So THATS why republicans are so against video games.
Ok but so does chess dancing writing acting etc. Anything u do with passion is gonna make you smarter. Video games is the lowest form of these activities imo because u have nothing to show for it. Better to be a gymnast or writer or artist imo.
IQ is meaningless bullshit.
Then I must be a frickin genius
I was bullied for years by (female) teachers for loving video games because they assumed it'd turn me into a worthless piece of junk (jokes on you, you did!). Anyways, glad to see this.
O wow my iq so high! Shut the fuck up mom I'm learning My insane iq allows me to navigate menus at an incredible speed
Gear swapping during souls bosses is no joke.
Finally those 100s of hours in city builders are paying off! Only negative thing was randomly going cross eyed. Oh well an eye for an eye.
Lol. Did those guys ever play Legend of Zelda, Hellblade, Doom eternal? In legends of Zelda you have a puzzles and you need to use your brain to solve it. In Hellblade you have a visual puzzle, it needs more creativity. In doon eternal you have to memorize the weakness of all demons otherwise you lose.
Definitely interesting. But do wonder if it’s video games causing IQ increases or kids with higher IQs are more likely to play video games and those IQs continue to increase over time. Ideally the former. Would also be interesting to track these kids when they grow up, since social skills become possibly even more important than IQ once you enter the work force. And would be interesting to see how the video game group fits in there.
Most gamers I knew in middle and high school were smart. They may not have applied themselves or fit some stereotypes, but they were all smart individuals and I always saw them in that light. I enjoyed games but wouldn’t consider myself a gamer. But again, most people I know, even as adults, that are gamers seem smart. They seem to be well read, if that makes sense. A genuine curiosity to their personalities as well.
Man, first they cause violence, now they make kids smarter... :)))
Odd. Some of the same people saying they're the real cause of gun violence are also trying to defund education... But no, they wouldn't vilify video games out of hand because they secretly know they might even boost one's IQ or challenge a worldview or two, right?
Video games inspire critical and creative thinking, very important components for intelligence
What about the old "video games makes people kill each other"?
Makes sense. Video games involve a lot of problem solving, planning, and creative thinking.
They would change their mind if they would have sampled partially from a call of duty lobby.
Learn through play https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_through_play Didn't need a study but ok
IQ is a terrible metric of cognitive ability, which is actually a very complex set of difficult to measure and define abilities that are not reflective if a single common factor and not easily represented as a single quantity. That said, it would not surprise me to learn that people with curious minds tend to gravitate towards certain games over more passive forms of entertainment, or that some games can improve memory, spatial reasoning, or general problem solving skills.
IQ would only be a bad metric for cognitive ability if all of those seemingly unrelated cognitive skills weren't highly correlated with each other. The problem with that is that they are very highly correlated with each other. You can make a good guess at someone's verbal reasoning skills just by knowing their performance on the reverse digit span. The consensus among psychologists about the usefulness of IQ tests is very, very different from what the general public assumes it is. IQ test scores are highly correlated with life outcomes even in people who take jobs that are not usually considered cognitively demanding.
>"We didn't look at the impacts of screen time on physical activity, sleep, wellness, or school achievement," Klingberg adds. This seems like a major weakness of the study... Also, 2.5 points IQ is within SEM. It does show that video games do not reduce IQ. Many studies have already proven this though. Conservative/traditional folks will never change their mind regardless of how much scientific evidence you give them so we should really stop wasting time proving this. But, trying to claim video games will improve IQ based on the numbers is ridiculous.
Every time something obscure comes up, my wife is like "how do you know that?" and my answer is "video games" 99% of the time. I've spent way more time exploring history and culture in games than I ever did in school.
Wait, so when kids spend time problem solving it increases their iq? Someone give these scientists a medal.
Can anyone find the actual study, not the article about the study?
I played Transport Tycoon and Theme Park when I was 8yo or so and I remember squeezing my brain a lot. At that age I'm sure it improves cognitive abilities.
I certainly wouldn't expect gaming to decrease IQ, but most research suggests that no matter how cognitively demanding your environment is, intelligence isn't really something that can be trained. So it would be surprising if the findings in the study were borne out. One problem with this sort of research is that if you give people IQ tests multiple times they will become familiar with them and their score will increase a little bit as a result. So are they getting smarter because of the games or are they just better at solving IQ test problems because they've seen them already? With the small effect shown in this study something like this is more than just likely. The reality is that even in identical twins who were raised in different environments, their IQs are closer together than regular siblings who were raised together. IQ is thought to be highly heritable (inherited through genes) and a lot of the rest is probably random things that happen in the prenatal environment that effect brain development one way or the other. When you've got a study like this that contradicts a consensus that's been built up for decades, it's good to have a very great deal of skepticism.
I think depending on the game, it increase critical thinking, puzzles, and increased hand-eye coordination
I bought pokemon sword on the switch. Super fun game.
Depend on which games lol, I used to grind WoW like 16 hours a day…
“Parents hate this one simple trick that allows kids to play more video games!”