Video Gamers See the World Differently

[wraggster]

Hours spent at the video gaming console not only train a player's hands to work the buttons on the controller, they probably also train the brain to make better and faster use of visual input (http://today.duke.edu/2013/06/vidvision), according to Duke University researchers (abstract (http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-013-0472-7)). 'Gamers see the world differently,' said Greg Appelbaum, an assistant professor of psychiatry in the Duke School of Medicine. 'They are able to extract more information from a visual scene.' ... Each participant was run though a visual sensory memory task that flashed a circular arrangement of eight letters for just one-tenth of a second. After a delay ranging from 13 milliseconds to 2.5 seconds, an arrow appeared, pointing to one spot on the circle where a letter had been. Participants were asked to identify which letter had been in that spot. At every time interval, intensive players of action video games outperformed non-gamers in recalling the letter."

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/06/11/2332256/video-gamers-see-the-world-differently