Arthur’s Brainteasers

You may be thinking in regards to progressed ways to maintain your brain in top shape in 2009. Two recent scientific studies published by Dr. Arthur Kramer and colleagues suggest an intriguing possibility: playing scheme videogames. Especially if you are 60-years-old or over.

The two studies are:

1) Basak C, et al “Can training in a real-time scheme video game attenuate cognitive decline in older adults?” Psychol Aging 2008; DOI: 10.1037/a0013494.

2) Boot, W. R., Kramer, A. F., Simons, D. J., Fabiani, M. & Gratton, G. (2008) The effects of video game playing on attention, memory, and executive control. Acta Psychologica, 129, 387-398.

Let’s initial review the primary study, a landmark experiment in that it showed wide and significant cognitive gains in adults over 60 years old who played a scheme videogame (Rise of Nations) for 23 hours.

A team at the University of Illinois recruited 40 adults over 60 years old, half of whom were asked to play a computer game called Rise of Nations, a role-playing game in which you have to build your own empire: game players have to build cities, feed and employ their people, maintain an adequate military and exaggerate their territory.

Both the experiment and the control groups were assessed before, for the duration of and after the video game training on a potpourri of tests, and the “gamers” became significantly better – and rapidly and without delay – at switching amid tasks as equated to the comparison group. Their working memory, as reflected in the tests, was also significantly bettered and their reasoning capacity was enhanced.

Really remarkable results.

The second study, in contrast, found no comparable cognitive gains for college students in their early 20s who played the same game for the same number of hours, no matter of whether they play videogames oftentimes or don’t. How come this contrast?

In order to better understand this, I contacted Dr. Arthur Kramer, one of the scientists involved in both studies, to ask a few questions.

Question: What may, in your view, explain the dissimilar effect of the videogame Rise of Nations on non-gamers, contrasting both studies?

Answer: Certainly one of the most remarkable amid our two studies was the age of the study players – with young adults serving as subjects in the Acta Psychologica paper and older adults serving as subjects in the Psychology & Aging study. We observed training gains for the older but not for the younger adults. There are various reasons why this might have been the case. First, older adults carry out more poorly on the target abilities that we were attempting to train – that is executive control processes – than younger adults. So it might be the case that video game training gains are more readily observed for cognitive processes that are more or less degraded. Second, while it is rather easy to find older adults who have never played video games (and exceptionally strategy-based games like Rise Of Nations) it is very difficult to find wholly naïve younger adults (although the younger adults subjects in our study did play video games less than 1 hour per week). So it is imaginable that video game training based gains might be more readily observed the less experience that somebody has with video games. These seem to be the most likely reasons for the dissimilar effects in the two studies.

Question: What is the main significance from both studies combined/ what do we recognise today that we didn’t recognise 3 months ago?

Answer: First, I think that our results suggest promise with regard to video game playing and older adults cognition. However, given, to my knowledge, this is the original try to improve executive control abilities of older adults by way of strategy-based video game playing surely further and added studies ought to be conducted to further explore this relationship, particularly with real-world tasks as transfer tasks. Second, the results of our study with younger adults suggest that caution is in order with regard to assuming that video game training will enhancing, perceptual, attentional and cognitive abilities of young people. Clearly, there are important boundary conditions of such relationships that we don’t yet know.

In short, your brain needs Novelty and Challenge at all ages. And a videogame such as Rise of Nations may provide that Novelty and Challenge in particular if you are an adult who is not playing videogames already.

Have a outstanding and brainy 2009!

Arthurs Brainteasers Picture

Arthurs Brainteasers Image

Arthurs Brainteasers Picture

Arthurs Brainteasers Pic

Arthurs Brainteasers Image

Arthurs Brainteasers Image