20% Smarter >.>

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/97838-Department-of-Defense-Research-Gamers-Are-20-Smarter

This just made my morning.

Thank you!

np just got the email from the head of my course wiht this link - made my day too

My favorite line in the article:
Awesome sauce, indeed.

Great resource for when parents tell you games rot your minds

Ha, he beat you to it.

These people have never gotten an Xbox, purchased live and listened to all the retards screaming their heads off.

This

And the article is actually talking about adults. Not the 12 year old with the high pitched voice.

(Though, yes, I realize there are some adults that still fit in this category.)

I am a gamer, and I'd still say to my daughter when she gets old enough, that they rot your brain.

These "studies" are all bullcrap, plain and simple. People need to stop taking what these "studies" say as fact, seriously, and use some commonsense.

I will agree that gamers are a bit more social(internet-wise), and that they have better concept of short-term problem solving and have better eye coordination. But in no means are gamers smarter then the next guy, simply because they play a video game. That is a f'n HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE statement, and completely untrue.

If anyone honestly thinks this "study" is true, then I'm sorry to say: That until this "study" or any actually study canvas' the entire gaming population, and an equal and equavalant outside population? That this study or any study is pure heresay, and is just propaganda. Sorry, but it is.

To be perfectly fair, it has validity: due to the nature of games, a gamer's brain is much more myleninated to uncovering/depicting patterns, remembering things, picking out objects, coordination when dealing with small items, et cetera.

Believing a study blindly is stupid, granted. If it coincides with facts that you can research, not so much.

I don't think that games make you smarter. I think that, aside from heavy action/sports games, they generally appeal to a smarter audience. In the same way that watching Sex in the City doesn't make you a 40 year-old woman. But odds are, you are. =P

I believe this. I know first hand.

Before I played online games my grammar was pretty poor, and my spell wasn't the best. After playing them for a while I learned how to use the English language much better.

I'm sure there's other things from video games that have helped me learn/solve problems ect, but that's the first thing that came to mind.

Well, to be honest this can be used as an arguement. But it would still fail, for a simple fact. Video games(for you), was just a tool to learn the English language better. And this "study" claims that gamers are smarter then the next guy, which is completely unfounded.

I would agree to this statement, with exception to children ages 6-17. We all have met these kids on FFXI, and over other online games that are some of the most moronic children you'd hope to never meet. But yes, I'd agree that certain games appeal to people of certain intelligence, just like everything in our world/society.

Oh, well I pulled a tl;dr....

Waaay to busy killing lizards to read. Jeeze XD

No, really, it's not unfounded >_> Let me see if I can dig up my notes about brain myelination and then find some sources.

Farming for almost 5 hours to get this baby made me 30% smarter.

Your head seem to be on fire.

I'm sorry, but no "study" on any subject has actual "validity", unless the study is actually based in reality. ; ; Which means this: To have a fair and impartial study, the study needs to take course over a few decades. Needs to be a "double-blind" study, and canvas' the entire community in question, and an equal sized(among others) community that has no drive or need to participate in aforementioned communities arena. I know I'm missing more, but I'm having a brain fart right now, and am at work. :P

And please, for the love of all that is good in this world, do not take the study as fact because it has the stamp of the US Government on it.

And how can you honestly research this topic? Unless you are a very rich , extremely bored person, who has the time to fly/drive to every single US/Canadian home and take a few months out of your life/per household?

Please us commonsense with any study, because this study has no validity at all.

"We have discovered that video game players perform 10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than normal people that are non-game players,"

Did they consider that people that play games were already better at these things before they started to play? And that's why they enjoy the games and therefore play them more. Conversely, non-gamers may have not enjoyed gamin they have tried, because their brains are wired up differently.

I think there's more complex chicken-and-egg stuff going on than a fatuous declaration that gaming makes you smarter.

Agreed; that's pretty much what I said.

Get a group that plays video games and one that does not, have each mark down how much time they've played--or not--and get tested on things in reality. Even if it's taking a fifteen minute test every day that tests your ability to recall and recognize patterns and such. It would probably make an amazing college final project.

Edit: by no means am I saying that this premise only applies to video games, there are quite a number of things that would allow somebody's mind to myelinate in the same way.

Exactly, thank you. ^^

The whole study was just a futile exercise, and is most likely just pure propaganda(like nearly all "studies" are anyways).

This thread reminds me of a report I saw on the local news a few weeks ago. Apparently there was a study done to prove that gamers are better at translating maps than non gamers. To demonstrate, they took a non gamer and dropped her off in the middle of a huge park with nothing but a map and had her find her way out, she reported that she struggled a bit. They made her play games for a week or two and then dumped her off somewhere again with just a map and she reported that the map was much easier to read the second time around.

I don't think it's an increase in intelligence, but I do think that gamers get more opportunities to practice doing certain things certain ways, and that's why they scored higher in the study. Even the article says that they're only exercising certain areas of their brains that just happen to make them more efficient in the military. Study isn't completely invalid, it isn't proving anything more than that practice makes perfect. Still useful to the military though, I'd imagine.

KK, here's what is wrong with what you are saying.

At best, this "study" and what you have tried to say is a good way to go about a study, is an insight. And by no means is truth, fact or how it actually is in the real world.

The reason is this: If you were to do what you have said, then anyone in that "study" could fudge their numbers either by themselves or by those that collect the data from them. Which means that it is pure propaganda, either perpetuated by the person participating in the "study" or by those that initiated the "study" in the first place.

And to be honest, any college professor who took what you propose, as an actual evidence of fact? I'd like to know, because I would make sure to boycott that college, until that professor was removed. Sorry, but I don't like our professors to be tools and stupid to boot. (No offense to you :P)


All this "study" does, is provide an insight into those that were "studied", it does not provide an insight into the rest of the gaming community, or the rest of the worlds population. But in all honesty, it is pure heresay and is no evidence of truth or fact.

Let me ask you this, and then go reevaluate this "study" please:

How would you feel, if I told you that after studying you and another person for a whole 15 minutes out of your day for one month, based solely off of your posts here. That I came to a conclusion:

You are dumb, and the other person is smarter then you could ever hope to be. And I have the reason: Because they post in threads labeled "Dragoon", and you do not.

Is that fair? Is it accurate? Is it anymore credible if I put a US Government stamp on it? Does it honestly reflect how you are intelligent, or how the other person is intelligent? Or how you both accumulated that intelligence? Or how the division in intelligence came to be?

The answer is: No.


I'm sorry, but your "study" is not even close to the truth. It only reflects a small portion of whatever gaming community they "studied". And the "study" did not follow these gamers from conception to current day. Therefore it cannot be taken as fact, it is pure heresay, nothing more. Sorry.

Correlation is not causation.

For one, why do you keep thinking that I believe it's valid because it's got a stamp on it?

Anyways: I'm not going to lie, I probably am wrong in what I proposed as a study; my actual experience with this sort of thing is 0% and I'm not in college yet. Looking back, I probably shouldn't have suggested that.

Also, your proposal would be valid if posting in DRG topics actually meant anything; however, it does not.

However, on the flip, you are ignoring the simple fact that playing video games stimulates neural nets that would not get stimulated as often, therefore myelinating the brain and making one smarter; therefore, it is unfair to rule out the fact that "gamers" may in fact be smarter as a whole due to the fact that they exercised these neural paths. That is undeniable: you can look at how the brain develops and such as well as what neural paths light up by doing what activities. Perhaps it should be rephrased to say that playing video games "make you smarter" if the games are not mindless dribble.

See, but that's not an actual sign that video games can make you smarter then the next man who uses a different arena to learn the same thing. All that is, is repetition, which in all honesty can be taught in any arena. Be it work, school, video games, at home, etc.. I agree that video games can be a tool to teach, because they are after all just computers that display visually, basically they can be teachers with very accurate pictures(is what I'm trying to get at). But the idea that gamers are 10~20% smarter then the next guy? Is completely unfounded, and is a HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE statement. Sorry, but true. (Yes, I know you didn't say that. Just trying to reinforce my point :P)




That's what scares me though, and why I know it's crap. It all looks like a propaganda campaign to make sure that the military can keep using it's video games simulations to train soldiers, if not making the average gamer look smarter then they actually are, towards whatever end.

Idk, these "studies" that don't actually take everything into consideration and are only done over a short period of time, and are fudged, bother the crap out of me.

I'd like nothing more then to be able to say, "Hey dude, I'm 10~20% smarter then anyone in this joint that doesn't play video games!", "Even Stephan Hawking over there!!"

But in reality my being smarter then a lot of people I deal with on a everyday scene, has nothing to do with video games.

And my friend who is a freaking idiot, is not stupid because he plays a lot of video games.

Video Games can teach, yes. Can it be a better tool for teaching, then school or books? Sure it can. But the statement that gamers are 10~20% smarter then non-gamers, is a load of crap.

(Again, not aimed at you :P)