In those days, we were told that much of gaming would drain the cognitive reasoning of your brain. We had to embrace such perception about gaming. Even if you are keen about gaming, you just have to draw your limits. Now the internet has gotten lots of proliferations and studies have proven us wrong, saying that gaming will improve our brain functionalities.
According to studies, people who regularly spend time playing online games increase the chances of developing analytical, cognitive skills, problem-solving skills, and academic performance.
However, to all the online gamers out there, you just have to jettison whatever anybody is telling you contrary online gaming. They will come and inform you that playing games online will get your brain rotten. Now, research shows games seem to do more good than harm, despite popular opinion. Keep on gaming.
A study that was conducted in Australia, involving over 12,000 high school students, shows that when it comes to internet usage, students who regularly played online video games scored higher in math, reading, and science tests than students who didn’t.
The research pointed out some cognitive and psychological benefits of computer games. However, the study is not yet a guarantee that anyone who is involved in online gaming would develop cognitively, but there are increase chances.
Associate Professor, Alberto Posso RMIT, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing who conducted the study explained that students who play online games almost every day score 15 points above the average in Mathematics and 17 points above the average in science.
The study used Australian data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tested students from more than 700 schools in 2012 and collected information on their personal interests and online activities.
Meanwhile, psychologists have argued that massive online player games can be beneficial to intellectual development.
“It’s interesting that this study showed a positive correlation between online gaming and academic performance, but we really need better ways of understanding how and why people play video games before we’re able to tease apart what that correlation actually means, if anything,”Peter Etchells, psychologist at Bath Spa University said, adding that more of detailed research has to be done to answer this sort of question confidently.
Though, other studies suggest gaming is good for your learning abilities, powers of memory, motor skills and can even potentially be used for recovering from brain injuries.
Posso believes that problem-solving aspect of gaming could help sharpen the cognitive abilities of students and provide them with a way to practice the skills they learned in the classroom.
“When you play online games, you’re solving puzzles to move to the next level, and that involves using some of the general knowledge and skills in maths, reading, and science that you’ve been taught during the day,” he said.
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