Computer games - a cure for insanity
Computer strategy games help people over the age of 60 to preserve and improve their thinking abilities, according to an article published in the journal Psychology & Aging by scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.This is the first study that has shown the influence of strategic computer games on cognitive skills that are not directly related to the game, notes the author of the article, Professor Arthur Kramer, whose words are quoted in the university's message.
Previous experiments aimed at improving thinking abilities, such as short-term memory, have shown that their participants improve their abilities only in performing the tasks that were assigned to them in the laboratory, but not in everyday life.
The experiment involved 40 elderly people, half of whom played the Rise of Nations strategy game about 24 hours a week, in which the player must create and develop his own state, his army and economy, expand his territory, improve the condition of the population.
"You need merchants, you need an army to protect yourself, you need to spend resources on education and food. This game forces you to plan and allocate resources - to train skills that, in my opinion, are very important for older people," says one of the authors of the article, Chandramalika Basak.
All participants - the "players" and the control group - passed a series of tests before, during and after the experiment, which measured their ability to switch between tasks, their short-term visual memory, logical thinking, the ability to retain and operate two or more units of information.
In addition, the ability to memorize words and recognize the same images shown from different angles was tested.
According to the results of the experiment, the scientists found that the "players" switched from one task to another much better and faster, they also operated much better with data and retained information in memory. The logical thinking skills of the "players" were also higher. The improvement of short-term visual memory and the ability to recognize images was not so significant.
The computer game did not affect the results of the study of the ability to memorize words, as well as the ability to count.