One more reason to justify that next game/hardware purchase! :)
Quote
A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception. The specific benefits are wide ranging, from improved hand-eye coordination in surgeons to vision changes that boost night driving ability.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/03/06/hours-playing-video-games-can-change-brain-for-better-research-finds/#ixzz2Int1WOeu (http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/03/06/hours-playing-video-games-can-change-brain-for-better-research-finds/#ixzz2Int1WOeu)
Great news, although I don't think my wife will let me use it as an excuse ::)
These things are interesting, and I'm glad you shared the article. I'd always be more comfortable with these sorts of findings if journalists EVER reported who supplied the funding for these studies, but I suspect that would undermine the credibility of the findings, which would make the article less dramatic. (and we all know drama generates more advertising revenue, which is the end-goal of most free press these days).
I remember back in the 90s when there was about a decade of university research concluding that there had been no change in global temperatures. Turns out almost all of that research had been funded by the energy industry, who obviously had a vested interest in funding those studies whose approaches would be more likely to conclude no change in temperature. Only after a decade of churn on those spurious studies did we move on to the more nuanced and important questions of global climate change: What role does humanity play in that climate change and is there any sort of "tipping point" we need to worry about any time soon?
Non-industry sponsored researchers very often had their own agendas as well, it just turned out more of them were right in the 1990s when the issue was first being debated.
None of this is meant to take this thread in an R&P direction. Just citing one example of how important it is to know the agenda of a research group when you hear about a study with interesting findings. I have no idea if that might be the case with the studies in this article, but it at least is a relevant question.
The alternative is to be a lap dog for whichever vested interest caters to your preexisting tastes and throws enough money at research to allow you to rationalize those tastes.
Whenever I play a game I just want to go out and kill people.
Isn't it like that for everybody else? Does that mean I am made smarter?
The voices say I am smarter.
Touching on the above, was I ever shocked to learn that those PSA's about alergies
wiping out a generation of children were sponsored by the people who make and market
the "epi-pen". The "facts" in those adds were a little dodgy.