Gaming has long got outside of the mentality that only children engage themselves in such kind of activity. People of all ages play video games these days, whether they’re doing it just for fun, to make time flow faster, or even for training their ambition, attention, and sagacity.
But it seems that playing video games as a child has an even better effect on the person’s mental health, as it can significantly boost his or her intelligence. This is the new claim coming from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), after a study done for 27 people with ages between 18 and 40 years old.
Gamers become smarter even years after they stop playing
Each of the participants was tested on his cognitive skills before playing the Super Mario 64 game for 1.5 hours along 10 consecutive days. The same people were tested again immediately after playing the video game, and ultimately 15 days after gaming. The brain-stimulation technique transcranial magnetic stimulation was also used to see if the gaming performance will also be increased.
Marc Palaus, who is a UOC PhD researcher, declared:
People who were avid gamers before adolescence, despite no longer playing, performed better with the working memory tasks, which require mentally holding and manipulating information to get a result,
People who played regularly as children performed better from the outset in processing 3D objects, although these differences were mitigated after the period of training in video gaming, when both groups showed similar levels,
Despite the beneficial impact video games have for some cognitive tasks, the researchers admit that this effect may not apply to scenarios outside of gaming.
However, the study doesn’t rule out the negative impacts video games can have on children, like making them more violent. But of course, it ultimately depends on the person’s education and perception in most cases.
