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“Brain games” are a very popular class of the supposed casual gaming class of video games, but a British Broadcasting establishment study indicates that they do not improve cognitive abilities at all . It was only a six-week study, but well over 8,000 eighteen to 60 year-olds were involved. Participants played these brain games for at least 10 mins a day and three days a week, but researchers could not find any statistically major difference between this group and a control group of virtually three thousand that only surfed the Net.
These findings contradict those of others that had recommended an improvement in memory among older game players. Most psychologists nevertheless, caution that memory as a cognitive function is very situation-specific, meaning that fungability or the cross-applicability has a tendency to be low. For instance, playing a video gaming classic like Tetris or Pacman will improve your memory for tasks explicit to those titles and not really transfer over to others. It’s easily imaginable how unlikely it is that video gaming performance should transliterate into increased ability in something not related to gaming!
Confusing the problem further nevertheless , is the chance that some brain games are a lot better than others and more useful, whether or not only moderately so. The U. S. state Institutes of Health has developed some games in collaboration with a commercial distributor which do seem to have helped older individuals that enjoy them. Then there are the criticisms of the BBC study, targeting especially on its strategy, which concerned spectators of its popular “Bang Goes the Theory” program a self-selected population, always suspect in rigorous scientific research.
Psychologists and cognitive scientists have long suggested activities like learning a new language or perhaps picking up a new sport for something that would actually challenge our intellectual abilities. Learning a new language is obviously mentally stimulating, but research now proves that new neuron connections are formed by vigorous exercise no matter what our age.
Tags: brain games, memory games, video games, video gaming