Video games boost intelligence

Lovers of GTA and of resident Evil are not necessarily dangerous potential psychopaths. They would even have an intelligence superior to the others… Because as violent as they are, the video games of action would stimulate the learning, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a journal that is not very well known for lobbying pro-gaming.

Understand new models
To reach their conclusions, the authors asked their subjects to play two sets of shots for 50 hours, Call of Duty and Unreal Tournament 2004. The first, ultra realistic, takes place in a war situation, and the other, in a fictional world where the character participates in a tournament of deadly battles. The subjects in question had little experience with video games.

However, the researchers observed that at the end of the experiment, the faculties of perception and analysis of the players had increased tenfold. They were more apt to understand new models, and more ready to learn. According to one of the authors, Daphne Bavelier, professor of cognitive science at the University of Rochester, this observation could be explained by the fact that in the game, the brain keeps predicting what will happen.

Effective from 5 hours per week
“To refine its ability to predict, the brain is constantly building models, or templates, of the world. The better the model, the better the performance. Now we know that the action video game actually improves the quality of the models. Better yet: the benefits would be sustainable. The best performance was seen a year later.

Previous research had already highlighted the benefits of video games on cognitive faculties (perception, reaction speed, ease of analysis, etc.). “Not only do players excel in a number of abilities, but they also get better as they practice more,” write the authors, who estimate that five hours of play per week improves their learning potential. When science uninhibits the “geek” …