Shoot 'em ups are good for you, say researchers

Games appeal to even the youngest of participants. Photo / Martin Sykes

For many parents they are little more than the source of our children's tantrums, feet-stomping and long periods of hibernation in stuffy rooms behind locked doors. Yet a new study into the effects of computer games has revealed fast-paced action games turn us into faster and better decision-makers.

Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York conducted a series of tests to gauge whether regular bouts of high-speed gaming could help to improve our cognitive abilities.

The researchers tested dozens of 18- to 25-year-olds who were not ordinarily video-gamers, splitting them into two groups. The first were told to play adrenalin-packed action games such as Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament, in which participants dash around online arenas shooting each other.

The second group were given The Sims 2, a more sedate, strategy-based game that mimics the pace of everyday life. After 50 hours of playing, both groups were tested to see whether they could make quicker decisions.

Those who had trained on the action games made decisions 25 per cent faster. They also answered just as many questions correctly as their strategy game-playing peers.

"It's not the case that the action game players are trigger-happy and less accurate - they are just as accurate and also faster," said Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive scientist at Rochester who has been testing how computer games affect the brain and eyes. "Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference."

The findings are significant because they suggest how some computer games - often vilified for turning people into couch potatoes - help players to develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them.

This benefits, researchers suggest in Current Biology, can include improving the ability to multi-task, drive, read small print and keep track of friends in a crowd.

Dr Bavelier says people make decisions based on probabilities they are constantly calculating and refining in their heads - a process scientists call probabilistic inference. The brain weighs up every piece of visual and auditory information around us, helping to come to an accurate decision.

"Decisions are never black and white," she said. "As you drive, for instance, you may see a movement on your right, estimate whether you are on a collision course and, based on that probability, make a binary decision: brake or don't brake."

Action-filled computer games - which force the brain to make a whole series of fast-paced decisions in a split second - appear to improve our ability to make decisions quickly. It is not the first time computer games have been shown to have physical and mental benefits, although, until recently, most scientific research concentrated on negative aspects such as addiction and whether gaming stunts a child's social skills.

Last year, however, the same team published a study showing how action games enhanced our ability to see in the dark.

There is also a growing number of studies which show how games increase hand-eye co-ordination. A study of surgeons two years ago in the US found that those who played the Nintendo Wii before going into an operating theatre performed better than those who didn't play games.

FIRST-PERSON SHOOTERS

They may be angrily condemned by critics as violent, but first-person shooters are the games that are most likely to improve reaction time and eyesight. The frenetic pace of these shoot-em-up games were found to encourage the brain to make faster and more accurate decisions.

ROLE-PLAY GAMES

(RPGS)Relaxing and wholly immersive, these games may be addictive, but they do little to aid reaction times and decision-making, researchers found.

BRAIN-TRAINING GAMES

Manufacturers are increasingly marketing "brain-exercising" games for the adult market. This year, however, a test of 11,500 gamers failed to find any improvement in mental performance after people regularly used brain-training games.Independent

- Independent