Different studies suggest that the moderate practice of action video games , especially those that require making decisions quickly, can improve users' visual acuity, increase their concentration and even enhance their short-term memory. Now, Daphne Bavelier, an expert in cognitive science at the University of Rochester in New York, points out that it also has a beneficial effect on our ability to learn.
In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Bavelier and his colleagues argue that our brain is constantly trying to anticipate what is going to happen to us next , whether it is while listening to a conversation, driving or even carrying out a delicate task, such as a surgical procedure.
"For this, our brains build templates of the world," he says. “The tighter these are, the better our performance will be. Now we know that action video games encourage those models to be better. "
Bavelier highlights that this phenomenon is more pronounced among users of this type of title than among those of other games and that, in fact, this improvement is maintained over time. Thus, the volunteers who participated in the trial still maintained a greater capacity for learning than the control group several months after participating in it.
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