Listen players: these video games make you smarter and improve your social skills

by Jason Peters

Attention players: these video games make you smarter and improve your social skills.

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Parents Video Games make you smarter.

Everyone has heard the family parents’ warning about video games: they will rot your brain. But the scientific community is emerging with a very different view: some games can offer substantial cognitive, intellectual and emotional benefits.

“If you take people who have never played video games before and play them for four weeks,” says Isabela Granic, professor of behavioral sciences at Radboud University, “you will see an improvement in spatial skills, which are directly related to performance in STEM. course of work and skills. ” Granic would know: she recently conducted a major research project that looked at dozens of scientific studies on games and their benefits in the real world and concluded that the cognitive benefits are both specific and long-lasting.

However, not all games are created equal when it comes to improving cognitive IQ. So, if you’re looking to get a head start while playing at home or at work or in between, here are some games that have been shown to improve cognitive skills in five key areas.

FOR IMPROVED SOCIAL SKILLS …PLAY: World of Warcraft

Massive Multiplayer Online RPGs (MMORPGs) aren’t just hack and slash experiences. They are also social microcosms where players are forced to interact and coordinate with other players to achieve their goals. Certainly, social skill measurements (via Bryant and Trower’s Social Situations Questionnaire) have improved among players of MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, one of the most popular online games in the world.

TO IMPROVE ATTENTION…PLAY: Counter-Strike

“Selective attention” is the psychological process of tuning out irrelevant information and focusing on what’s important during a task. A recent study published by the National Center of Biotechnology Information put gamers playing Counter-Strike and other high-energy action titles into an MRI system and compared them to non-gamers. The results showed that these games let players “allocate attentional resources more automatically, possibly allowing more efficient early filtering of irrelevant information.”

TO IMPROVE CREATIVITY…PLAY: The Sims 4

Creativity isn’t just an abstract idea. It can actually be measured through the use of the Torrance Test. A major study of youth gamers published in the journal, Computers in Human Behavior, showed that almost any kind of video game—with the sole exception of racing or driving games—was strongly correlated with increased creativity across all measures of the trait. So-called “interpersonal games” like the Sims series had the strongest positive effect on creative skills.

TO IMPROVE ANXIETY…PLAY: Bejeweled 3

Not every game that improves cognition requires machine guns or laser pistols. Puzzle-based video games, such as Bejeweled 3, that have simple interfaces, are easy to learn, and involve only a few minutes of play at a time have been shown to reduce stress. A decrease in cortisol can in turn improve mood and even reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and depression.

About Post Author

Jason Peters

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Born in Durban South Africa in 1989,
Linux lover, avid tech enthusiast
Chasing my dream of becoming an online content creator for everything platform I can

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