Study shows games improve your decision making

http://www.talktalk.co.uk/games/news/2010/09/15/study-shows-games-improve-your-decision-making.html

It's official - a study at the University of Rochester has shown that playing games can officially improve your decision making. If only they could have told our parents when we were young whippersnappers!

In a research product that features in the September 14th issue of 'Current Biology', researchers presented a group of players and non-players with a series of dots and were asked to identify the direction of the dots' motion. Tests varied in difficulty based on the number of dots that were moving in the same direction. Intriguingly, the study found players were able to make their decisions faster, and more accurately, then those who didn't play action games - notch one up for the FPS genre!

The researchers concluded that: "Unlike standard learning paradigms, which have a highly specific solution, there is no such specific solution in action video games because situations are rarely, if ever, repeated. Thus, the only characteristics that can be learned are how to rapidly and accurately learn the statistics on the fly and how to accumulate this evidence more efficiently". While it's an emerging area of study, it's encouraging for gamers to know that all those 'wasted hours' can actually have a positive effect on the human brain.

Researchers have said that the unpredictability of some shooters and other action games could play a factor in how quickly players can make decisions; as action games are becoming more complex, you are required to constantly evaluate routes, ammo, health, enemies and objectives all at once.

So the research means that whenever somebody is on at you to stop playing those pesky games, you could potentially argue that you are improving your decision making in preparation for your glittering future as a world leader. Far-fetched, but it's worth a try...