PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Action video game play improves decision-making skills

2010-09-13
(Press-News.org) People who play action video games are known for their fast reaction times compared to those who don't play the games. And it isn't that they are just "trigger happy," according to researchers who report their findings in the September 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

Rather, gamers are better at making quick and accurate decisions based on evidence extracted from their surroundings (a skill known as probabilistic inference). That appears to explain why video game-playing skills translate into broad improvements in many kinds of tasks, regardless of whether those tasks depend on the ability to pay attention or visual acuity, said Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester.

Such transfer of learning is notable because most kinds of training lead to improvements only on the specific task at hand, with limited improvements on other, even closely related tasks. "That's why when you give a test that's just a little different from what you did in class, half the students fall flat," Bavelier said. "Transfer of learning is lacking."

These benefits of video games stem only from action games, which almost always means "shooter games, where you go through a maze and you don't know when a villain will appear," Bavelier said. "It's not exactly what you'd think of as mind enhancing." Strategy or role-playing games don't have the same effect.

Bavelier was able to compare the skills of action gamers versus non-gamers through a series of carefully controlled and simple decision-making experiments in which people were presented with an array of dots and asked to identify the primary direction of the dots' motion. That task was made easier or more difficult by varying the number of dots moving in the same direction. Video game players were able to make those judgments faster without sacrificing accuracy, Bavelier and her colleagues found. Video game players also excelled in an auditory decision-making test in which participants were presented with noises through headphones and asked to decide whether the sound was heard in their right or their left ear.

The reason for such broad improvements in performance may be that action video games don't have a clear "answer." They are inherently unpredictable. "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," the researchers write. "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."

The researchers don't yet know exactly what happens at the level of neurons when people play video games to support those decision-making skills. But it's not that video games appeal to people with super vision or an unusual attention to detail, Bavelier said. Non-gamers who are forced to play action video games for 50 hours get better at making informed decisions, too. You don't even have to like playing the games—you just have to play them.

###

The researchers include C. Shawn Green, Alexandre Pouget, and Daphne Bavelier, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Early surgery after hip fractures reduces death

2010-09-13
Performing early surgery on elderly hip fracture patients reduces the risk of death by 19%, found a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj092220.pdf. Hip fractures are associated with a mortality rate of 14 to 36% in the year following the fracture and can negatively affect a patient's independence and quality of life. Current guidelines recommend surgery within 24 hours of the break, although some physicians who favour delays believe it provides more time to prepare the patient and can decrease ...

Liquid nitrogen most effective at removing warts

2010-09-13
Cryotherapy with liquid nitrogen is the most effective method to remove common warts, found a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj092194.pdf. The study, a randomized controlled trial, looked at 240 participants aged 4 to 79 in the Netherlands. The patients were assigned to three groups: cryotherapy with liquid nitrogen every two weeks, daily self-application of salicylic acid or a wait-and-see approach. Warts are a common childhood complaint, present in up to one-third of primary school ...

End-of-life discussions need skilled and sensitive approach

2010-09-13
Health care professionals need sensitivity when delivering the news of a patient's imminent death, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj101201.pdf. Rather than delegate end of life discussions to inexperienced members of medical teams, these should be delivered by experienced professionals with a network of colleagues who can help in communication and decision-making. "Without investments in training for all health care professionals and ongoing support for palliative care, we will ...

New insight into 'accelerated aging' disease

2010-09-13
Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS or progeria) is a rare genetic disease that causes young children to develop symptoms associated with advanced age, such as baldness, wrinkles, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. Now, a study published by Cell Press in the September 14th issue of the journal Developmental Cell uses a mouse model to shed light on progeria, and perhaps also on the normal aging process. Progeria is caused by a mutation in the gene for lamin A that leads to production of "progerin", a truncated form of the lamin A protein that causes the cell ...

Blacks with muscular dystrophy die 10-12 years younger than whites: New study

2010-09-13
African Americans with muscular dystrophy die 10 to 12 years younger than their white counterparts, according to research published in the Sept. 14 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The black-white mortality gap, which was calculated on the basis of 20 years of data, is among the largest ever observed in the annals of research into racial disparities in health care, say Dr. Nicte Mejia and Dr. Rachel Nardin, co-authors of the editorial. "Furthermore," they write, "white patients with MD [muscular dystrophy] enjoy increasing ...

Smokeless tobacco products not a safe option, won't help smokers quit

2010-09-13
Smokeless tobacco products should not be used as an alternative to cigarettes or for smoking cessation due to the risk of addiction and return to smoking, according to an American Heart Association policy statement. Smokeless tobacco products such as dry and moist snuff as well as chewing tobacco may also increase the risk of fatal heart attack, fatal stroke and certain cancers, according to the statement published online in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. "No tobacco product is safe to consume," said Mariann Piano, Ph.D., lead writer of the ...

Signaling hope for polycystic kidney disease

2010-09-13
Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease (ADPKD) is a common genetic disease that results in chronic kidney failure. Although the genes responsible for ADPKD have been identified (PKD1, PKD2), relatively little is known about how mutations in these genes promote cyst growth molecularly. In this paper, scientists at Children's Hospital in Boston, lead by Jordon Kreidberg, investigated the signaling pathways that go awry in the disease using mouse kidney epithelial cells in which Pkd1 was genetically deleted. They found that the protein c-Met was hyperactive in Pkd1-deficient ...

'Hi-JAK-ing' cancer by inhibiting Jak2

2010-09-13
Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) comprise a family of blood cancers characterized by clonal expansion of a single blood cell type. Untreated, these cancers can progress to bone marrow failure and acute myeloid leukemia. Several groups have identified activating mutations in the JAK2 gene as associated with MPN; JAK2 inhibition has therefore emerged as approach to MPN therapy. Thus far, however, JAK2 inhibition strategies have had limited efficacy and have been accompanied by significant toxicity. In this paper, Ross Levine and his group at the Memorial Sloane Kettering ...

JCI online early table of contents: Sept. 13, 2010

2010-09-13
EDITOR'S PICK Hi-JAK-ing Cancer by Inhibiting Jak2 Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) comprise a family of blood cancers characterized by clonal expansion of a single blood cell type. Untreated, these cancers can progress to bone marrow failure and acute myeloid leukemia. Several groups have identified activating mutations in the JAK2 gene as associated with MPN; JAK2 inhibition has therefore emerged as approach to MPN therapy. Thus far, however, JAK2 inhibition strategies have had limited efficacy and have been accompanied by significant toxicity. In this paper, Ross ...

Exosomal release of beta-catenin may explain why CD82 and CD9 suppress tumor metastasis

Exosomal release of beta-catenin may explain why CD82 and CD9 suppress tumor metastasis
2010-09-13
Researchers reveal a new way in which cells restrain beta-catenin and potentially suppress tumor metastasis: the protein can be ejected from cells in small vesicles called exosomes. The study appears online on September 13 in the Journal of Cell Biology (www.jcb.org). Beta-catenin is a central component of the Wnt signaling pathway that controls cell proliferation and differentiation. Activation of the Wnt pathway stabilizes beta-catenin, allowing it to move into the cell nucleus and control the expression of many different genes. Michael Caplan's group at Yale University ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Mysterious ‘Dark Dwarfs’ may be hiding at the heart of the Milky Way

Real-world data shows teclistamab can benefit many multiple myeloma patients who would have been ineligible for pivotal trial

Scientists reveal how a key inflammatory molecule triggers esophageal muscle contraction

Duration of heat waves accelerating faster than global warming

New mathematical insights into Lagrangian turbulence

Clinical trials reveal promising alternatives to high-toxicity tuberculosis drug

Artificial solar eclipses in space could shed light on Sun

Probing the cosmic Dark Ages from the far side of the Moon

UK hopes to bolster space weather forecasts with Europe's first solar storm monitor

Can one video change a teen's mindset? New study says yes - but there’s a catch

How lakes connect to groundwater critical for resilience to climate change, research finds

Youngest basaltic lunar meteorite fills nearly one billion-year gap in Moon’s volcanic history

Cal Poly Chemistry professor among three U.S. faculty to be honored for contributions to chemistry instruction

Stoichiometric crystal shows promise in quantum memory

Study sheds light on why some prostate tumors are resistant to treatment

Tree pollen reveals 150,000 years of monsoon history—and a warning for Australia’s northern rainfall

Best skin care ingredients revealed in thorough, national review

MicroRNA is awarded an Impact Factor Ranking for 2024

From COVID to cancer, new at-home test spots disease with startling accuracy

Now accepting submissions: Special Collection on Cognitive Aging

Young adult literature is not as young as it used to be

Can ChatGPT actually “see” red? New results of Google-funded study are nuanced

Turning quantum bottlenecks into breakthroughs

Cancer-fighting herpes virus shown to be an effective treatment for some advanced melanoma

Eliminating invasive rats may restore the flow of nutrients across food chain networks in Seychelles

World’s first: Lithuanian scientists’ discovery may transform OLED technology and explosives detection

Rice researchers develop superstrong, eco-friendly materials from bacteria

Itani studying translation potential of secure & efficient software updates in industrial internet of things architectures

Elucidating the source process of the 2021 south sandwich islands tsunami earthquake

Zhu studying use of big data in verification of route choice models

[Press-News.org] Action video game play improves decision-making skills