Interactive Games and Cognitive Abilities

Psychologists have been studying the effects of action games on the brain ever since 2000. They found that children between 6-12 years old might develop skills at managing multiple tasks simultaneously, included spatial attention. It is worth highlighting that these beneficial effects were observed in interaction games impact the cognitive abilities of children, such as perception, attention and reaction time.  These results help to further improve the understanding of the brain’s plasticity and potentially create games specifically designed to develop attention or spatial cognition. More specifically, interactive games help children improve pattern recognition, ordering and sequencing skills and higher overall competence level.

Action, Speed and Reflexes

The instance of speed is observed across various tasks beyond game situation. Interactive games may therefore provide an efficient training regimen to induce a general speeding of perceptual reaction times without decreases in accuracy of performance. Flexible or integrated training regimens require constant switching of processing priorities and continual adjustments to new task demands. Interactive and cooperative games seem to be an extreme case of such flexible gaming.

Benefits of Cooperation and Competition

Cooperative games are important not only for the immediate experience of the activities performed by the team, but also for the group skills, communication and bonding that result.

Benefits include:

  • Team building
  • Leadership skills
  • Organizational productivity, and
  • Empowers individuals to contribute to common goals

Stamina and Power

Stamina is defined as “staying power and enduring strength”. It has been argued that mental stamina and acuity is needed more than anything else in moments leading up to an intense competition. Agility, endurance, power and reaction are all skills that can be elevated through interactive games.

 

Developing Skills

Action games have been shown to outperform the non-action games on tasks of perception and attention. These enhancements are reflective of changes in speed of processing or strategy. Research evidence that interactive games can serve as a vehicle for promoting the development of cognitive skills and especially memory and attention. Therefore, such games promote the development of cognitive functions and seems to be educationally beneficial.

More Articles