Action Video Game Study: First-Person Shooter Success?

IWhilst video games are suspected of not living up to their comparatively youthful status as a cultural asset, defenders who do not trust the label refer to studies that have shown that gaming’s video players has a positive effect on perceptual abilities and learning performance. . Even though these cases are a sort of indirect profitability argument, which was believed to have been dispelled in discussions about video games, performance and opportunities to enhance it are now a more recognized currency – than gain in knowledge. .

One such study Now published in the science journal Nature. Eight researchers, led by study leaders Ru-Yuan Zhang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) and Adrian Chopin (University of Geneva), try to show that action video games have a positive effect on “learning to play”. So learning takes place when the information or skills people acquire in the course of a task enable these people to learn and cope with the requirements of new tasks more quickly.

play 45 hours of video games in ten weeks

In each of the two intervention studies, the scientists divided test individuals who had done no more than an hour per week in the previous year and the year before, first-person or third-person shooters as well as sports games and simulations, in the previous year with no more than More than three hours per week, and in two groups spent no more than five hours a week playing other video game genres a year earlier. One group played first-person shooters such as “Call of Duty: Black Ops” (Parts 1 and 2) and “Half Life 2”. The other group played simulation games such as The Sims 3, Zoo Tycoon 2013 and Viva Pinata. Test participants were required to commit to 45 hours of video game play over a ten-week period, playing a minimum of three per week and a maximum of eight hours.

Before and after the game phase, participants were tested based on certain tasks. They had to understand the direction of motion of the moving pattern, remember the shapes, and correctly sort the smileys with the changing faces according to their initial stage. Based on two rounds of evaluation with 25 (University of Rochester) and 52 (University of Geneva) test individuals, Zhang and colleagues found that the action gaming group was able to perform lower-level perceptual tasks and performed better in more tasks. Demanding cognitive tasks (high-level cognitive tasks) compared to a group dealing with life simulations. What do we learn from this now? So if shooters have positive learning effects, there’s only one thing left to consider: There should be enough time to learn on the side.