Can Playing Video Games Make You Smarter?
Can Playing Video Games Make You Smarter?
Can Playing Video Games Make You Smarter?
By Richard E Mayer
January 21, 2023
Summary
If you spend more than an hour a day playing video games, that's 5 percent of your life.
We want to know whether playing video games can increase cognitive skills: In other words, can game playing make you smarter? We have performed experiments, conducted meta-analyses of research literature and even produced a couple of books: Computer Games for Learning and Handbook of Game-Based Learning.
The results have been surprising - with some bad news, good news, even better news, and some prospects for the future based on rigorous scientific research.
Our researchers take a group of people and give them a test that assesses some cognitive skill, like attention, perception, mental flexibility, spatial processing, reasoning or memory.
One half plays a video game targeting that skill for two or more hours over many sessions; the other half engages in some other activity, like playing a word-search game.
A careful review of published scientific research shows that most off-the-shelf video games do not improve cognitive skills.
This holds true for strategy games, adventure games, puzzle games and many brain-training games.
Reference
Mayer, R. E. (2023, January 21). Can playing video games Make you smarter? Discover Magazine. Retrieved February 2, 2023, from https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/can-playing-video-games-make-you-smarter