A new study from the University of Toronto has shown significant improvement in visual search among people who play action video games even for a short while, according to Medical Xpress.
Shooting and racing video games are more likely to improve the ability to find hidden targets despite irrelevant distractions in an obscure situation, a new U.K. based study demonstrated. Ian Spence of Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, said that previous studies have shown how these action video games play an important role in improving visual attention, but the new study shows it may have also improved visual search.
Several tasks demand accuracy and efficiency in different situations and this study can help in achieving them. "It's necessary for baggage screening, reading X rays or MRIs, interpreting satellite images, defeating camouflage or even just locating a friend's face in a crowd," Spence explained, according to the report.
Initially, the researchers conducted a trial in which experienced action video game players competed against non-players in a visual search task. Researchers noted that experienced players performed better than non-players. Sijing Wu, a PhD candidate in Spence's lab in U of T's Department of Psychology and lead author of the study, wanted to bring a different perspective into the study by eliminating the experienced players and having a group of non-players trained for action video games to understand if these games improve the visual search skills.
Researchers included 60 participants who never played videogames and randomly divided them into three groups. Each group consisting 20 participants played a video game allotted to them for a total of 10 hours with one or two hour sessions. First set of people were allotted to play the first-person shooter game-Medal of Honor, while the other two groups of 20 participants each were given a racing game, Need For Speed and a puzzle game, Balance as a control.
As a result, people who played shooting or driving games for the entire 10 hour session showed more accurate and efficient performance on three visual search tasks, Wu said. But the group playing the puzzle game lacked a similar performance in any of the visual search tasks.
"We have shown that playing a driving-racing game can produce the same benefits as a shooter game," Wu said., "this could be very important in situations where we wish to train visual search skills. Driving games are likely to be more acceptable than shooting games because of the lower levels of violence."
The findings are published online in Springer Link under Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.
