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Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

nida.nih.gov

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Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#171

Post by throwaway0asd »

rednerrus wrote: post #48
colinmhayes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but for different reasons. Playing an instrument or sport means you're more likely to have a non-poor family with parents who have time to spend with you.

I think having parents who can help you develop a growth mindset is awesome and something generally reserved for upper/middle class parents. The part where your mind grows comes from practicing. So practicing video games is the same as practicing sports or instruments, the games encourage you to keep pushing yourself in the same way that a coach or teacher would.

That sounds like wishful thinking in a Dunning Kruger kind of way by somebody who never played physical sports on a competitive level.

Video games are a non-social controlled environment with obvious and predictable goals, similar to gambling. Gambling encourages a person to keep pushing themselves for a positive outcome but that alone does indicate any form of personal advancement.

Sports and music require development of skills, often with coaching by a human, and requiring long periods of independent practice without any kind of immediate feedback. In sports it takes years of investment to get good (less than excellent). If a given video game took years of investment to complete the current level almost nobody would play that game.

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#172

Post by yieldcrv »

imran-iq wrote: post #140
yieldcrv wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different person here and I'm also not going to provide external information, only more perspective and I'm more so curious on what your first counterpoints in your mind would be, absent any source: Video games are the cheapest form of paid entertainment for the amount of time that a single purchase occupies. Despite their audience being extremely price sensitive (which has nothing to do with socioeconomics, just con…

> I'm more so curious on what your first counterpoints in your mind would be Just some anec-data. I did not have any consoles growing up simply because we could not afford them. Eventually we got a single very old very slow machine that was shared among the family. I know a few other people in the same situation (usually 1st/2nd generation immigrants). Thus in my mind, video games are luxury products, which are not a…

yeah the upfront costs can be a lot and never get prioritized or easy to rationalize if you’re focused on survival

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#174

Post by wswope »

diceduckmonk wrote: post #160
drooby wrote: post #49

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strategy skills. I credit StarCraft with training my mind to travel at warp speed. Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.

> I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification I credit RuneScape with teaching me to write Java code to write bots to do the work involved with the delayed gratification. Then eventually created a GP selling business online. Also led a PvP clan and ran a PHP forum for it. The RuneScape metagame was where I acquired real-world software development skills.

Learned Java as a first language to write bots back in 2009. Present day, I’m 1.5 yrs into writing a market analysis/flipping site for OSRS, and it’s been a great way to play with time-series stuff, sysadmin, and front-end.

Gotta credit a good chunk of career success to RuneScape as well.

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#175

Post by technovader »

civilized wrote: post #71

Since I see we're using this as an excuse for general video-gaming-and-parenting discussion... I'm currently very conflicted about video games for my son (7). He loves them but mom hates them and insists on a limit of 10 minutes per day. I am not sure she is wrong. I played a lot of games as a kid and I probably could have done better things with my time. Not that I got any guidance as to what those better things wou…

I grew up as a heavy gamer, and it became my identity.

I absolutely got addicted to games and I still struggle with functioning in daily life without trying to go back and play 1-2 hours of games each night for the dopamine hit.

More importantly, I missed out on actual real life experiences throughout my childhood all the way till I was 28.

I let me kids play games now, but as long as it doesn't overtake more useful activities (reading, going out, playground, socializing with friends, swimming, biking)

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#177

Post by arc-in-space »

guelo wrote: post #79
etiam wrote: post #8

Careful now. Self-assortment into those who don't play at all and those who play at least three hours per day? There's good reasons to think those weren't otherwise equivalent populations in the first place. I'm buying "associated" but any sort of claims about effects from the games are going to have to come from elsewhere.

I dont understand what you're getting at. What are the "reasons to think" that the populations are not equivalent? The study controlled for parental income, sex, age, BMI, IQ.

I doubt those controls are sufficient, individual-level IQ measures are very variant and likely incomplete, so there still could easily be pre-existing differences the controls can't sort out

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#178

Post by aceazzameen »

darkteflon wrote: post #51
andrewmutz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What games do you recommend for kids of that age?

Fun question! I would suggest the following (in no particular order), subject to the proviso that you do need to be sat next to them to help manage frustration, especially in the beginning (although my personal take is that they shouldn’t be left to play by themselves at all at that age) - particularly as they learn the controller, general video game conventions, and the specifics of each game: - Breath of the Wild -…

Is It Takes Two about a married couple and their struggles? Isn't it made for couples? I could be wrong. What is that like for a child? Did it spark a lot of questions about marriage or anything else? Or did the eyes of a child ignore any adult themes and he only cared about the gameplay?

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#179

Post by drran »

sn0w_crash wrote: post #166
drooby wrote: post #49

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strategy skills. I credit StarCraft with training my mind to travel at warp speed. Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.

SC2 is probably the most likely to produce entrepreneurs. H3 taught real social skills and teamwork.

Engineering games, like Contraptions or bridge buildings, were helpful for me.

Roguelikes produces explorers and risk-takers.

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#180

Post by somenameforme »

ALittleLight wrote: post #110
drooby wrote: post #49

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strategy skills. I credit StarCraft with training my mind to travel at warp speed. Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.

I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life from RuneScape. My brother and I, playing for years, had amassed something like 100k gold between the two of us. We wanted more gold and were reading a guide online about to get it. The guide recommended a simple process of buying and selling coal in a kind of arbitrage trade. My brother and I were torn if we should try it, reasoning that if it were so easy to mak…

One wonders if the effect you're describing isn't the reason that self-directed entrepreneurship seems to be on a sharp decline in the developed world. Believe the media, let alone the internet, and one would imagine we have 8 year olds building nuclear reactors and curing cancer, in their basements. So how can this hare brained scheme you have ever possibly work? Surely somebody else would have done it by now.
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