Avid video game players 'faster, more accurate in real life'

Washington, Dec 18 (ANI): A new American study suggests that avid video game players process information faster and more accurately in real life situations.

Matthew Dye, Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier, psychological scientists from the University of Rochester, conducted the research.

The team reviewed all of the existing literature on video gaming and found that regular gamers were fast not just on their games but even in other lab tests of reaction time.

Dye and colleagues also discovered that gamers maintained their accuracy - in the game or in lab tests - as they got faster.

Researchers believe that happens due to the gamer's improved visual cognition. Playing video games boosts performance on mental rotation skills, visual and spatial memory and jobs needing divided attention.

The scientists said training with video games might help to trim down gender differences in visual and spatial processing and prevent some of the cognitive weakening that occurs with aging.

The study has appeared in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. (ANI)