Video games are not a complete waste of time, U.S. researchers say.
They have found that young adults adept at Spider-Man, Grand Theft Auto 3 and other computer games had stronger visual and motor skills than those who don't indulge in such pastimes.
University of Rochester brain researcher Daphne Bavelier argues that video games improve the kind of skills needed for careers that involve monitoring and processing a wide array of sensory information at once.
"The best example is airline pilots, especially those in the air force," Dr. Bavelier said.
This may be comforting news for parents who worry their children are wasting their youth playing games in which characters swing from building to building, steal cars or wage war.
But while video games improve what the researchers describe as "visual-selective attention," they don't improve the attention skills needed to learn how to read or solve math problems.
"Our findings have nothing to say about improving test scores, IQ, helping children with academic challenges, etc.," said Dr. Bavelier, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences. "We certainly don't mean to convey the message that kids can play video games instead of doing their homework."
That the research has shown playing video games helps develop certain skills did not surprise Mary Tsai-Davies, an Ottawa woman whose 10-year-old son Cameron loves video games.
She said she has noticed that playing the games has improved Cameron's eye-hand co-ordination and has made him read more quickly. He can scan instructions as they scroll by on the screen.
Like many parents, she has mixed feelings about the video games and limits their use. Cameron enjoys them, but she said he sometimes gets carried away. The new study has made her feel a bit better about his habits. "It does alleviate the guilt."
Dr. Bavelier and research partner Shawn Green compared two groups of male students, aged 18 to 23. Men in the first group played action video games for a minimum of an hour a day, at least four days a week. (Women weren't included because they could only find one on the University of Rochester campus who qualified.) The men in the second group had little or no video game experience.
The video game lovers were much better at a number of tests that involved processing information flashed quickly on a computer screen. The tests were quite dull, the researchers say, and very unlike playing the games, which have action, characters and plot. The students were asked to find a target object in a cluttered environment, for example, or to count squares that were briefly flashed on the screen.
"Clearly, whatever it is that gamers learn transfers to situations that use different tasks, different stimuli," Dr. Bavelier said.
To verify their findings, the researchers taught a group of men and women how to play video games. Their visual and motor skills improved after they played an action video game an hour a day for 10 days. But their test results still fell short of those scored by more experienced players.
Their findings are published in today's edition of the British journal Nature.
Dr. Bavelier said they are surprising because they show that action video games can be beneficial. The action games require monitoring the screen for new objects, usually enemies or invaders.
Games like Tetris, which don't require looking for new objects, don't result in a similar increase in skills, or at least the ones the team tested for.
Some parents worry about the violence in action video games. The study did not address that issue.
In the past, their work has focused on how learning and experience shapes the brain and the way it functions. One of the reasons they decided to study video game players is that Dr. Green is an avid player.
They say their work could help improve the lives of people with attention deficits, such as those brought on by strokes. Other researchers in the United States have already started trying to help children who are hyperactive or have attention-deficit disorder lengthen their attention span using video games.
The treatment involves monitoring the brain waves of the children as they play, and helping learn to modify their brain activity in a way that helps them to concentrate. They are also hoping to use the technique to train fighter pilots to remain cool during combat.
