Study: hardcore gamers have enhanced visual abilities

Alias · Jun 14, 2013

... and also no friends.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/12/gaming-visual-skills" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/201 ... ual-skills</a>

Hardcore gamers "see the world differently", says the author of a study that suggests gamers who play action games have better visual skills than non-gamers.

"They need less [visual] information to arrive at a probabilistic conclusion, and they do it faster," said Greg Applebaum, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Duke School of Medicine in North Carolina.

The study, published in the June issue of Attention, Perception and Psychophysics, tested how well 125 non-gamers and intensive gamers could identify letters that flashed up for only a fraction of a second.

In the test, a circle of letters appeared for 0.1 seconds followed by an arrow in the centre of the circle, pointing to where one of the letters had previously been. The study participants were then asked to identify the letter.

The arrow appeared between 13 milliseconds to 2.5 seconds after the letters flashed up. The gamers outperformed the non-gamers for all time intervals.

Your brain discards a great deal of visual information. For example, even though your nose is in your line of sight, your brain chooses to ignore that information and keeps your vision clear. The study found that gamers and non-gamers had similar abilities in terms of visual memory retention.

However, it could be that gamers are able to detect visual information faster, or simply make better guesses with the little visual information available to them.

Previous studies have also shown that gamers have enhanced visual capabilities. In 2003, researchers at the University of Rochester in New York found that people who play action games were able to track 30 percent more objects than non-gamers. Not all gaming is equal, the study found. Gamers who played non-action games like Tetris saw no benefit.

In a medical robotics study in 2012, young gamers attained similar scores on robotic surgery simulators to trained physicians.

Darpa, the Pentagon's research division, is one of the funders of the research, along with the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Army Research Office.
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Sir Phoenix · Jun 14, 2013

sweet, im becomming doctor!

B.A baramous · Jun 14, 2013

whoohoo!
another excuse to game while in med school. it makes me think faster than a teacher ^^

Killvion · Jun 14, 2013

We've known this for years, didn't we? ^^ Good that science finally catches up. :lol:

Jer9 · Jun 14, 2013

thanks for stating the obvious, researcher obvious!

Shadow · Jun 14, 2013

Can't wait to hear that someone in the middle of the war raged because he missed a shot and died on the field because of it :roll:

But on a more serious note, we all probably knew of this. Thing is that maintaining that perception is way.. way tougher as they do have to be in a still position for a long enough time so their body suffers.. if they want to keep their reaction time high they gotta exercise every day for a considerably more time and be focused while doing so to get the best effect out of it. Then back to gaming to continue sitting and working on perception. Vicious cycle, where some can get used to it.

Wonder what the rest of the world will thing about this.

Study: hardcore gamers have enhanced visual abilities

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