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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

#311

Post by rkuykendall-com »

rmbyrro wrote: post #269
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'm happy you got all of that from video-games and in no way I'm advocating against video games for everyone. But, in my life, I credit sports for everything you said. With the added benefit of a healthy neurology and biology in general. Something video games - and the digital world, as a whole - have been demonstrated to be detrimental. I mean, by serious studies.

I agree that the digital world can have detrimental effects, but I don't think it's alone in that. I have many friends, a brother, and a wife who also credit sports for all of the above, with the added benefit of a the trauma and lifelong pain from the injury that forced them to quit. Books honestly seem like a complete win. Hopefully my daughter will benefit from the safest parts of all 3.

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

#312

Post by shoemakersteve »

wswope wrote: post #174
diceduckmonk wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Something like ge-tracker? I always thought it sounded fun to work on something like that, but also a ton of work for a game I'd probably be bored with way before I'd be able to finish anything tangible. I'm guessing there's decent potential for profit though, so that might be a good motivator.

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

#313

Post by wswope »

shoemakersteve wrote: post #312
wswope wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Something like ge-tracker? I always thought it sounded fun to work on something like that, but also a ton of work for a game I'd probably be bored with way before I'd be able to finish anything tangible. I'm guessing there's decent potential for profit though, so that might be a good motivator.

Yep, same basic premise as GE-tracker with higher detail visualizations and fancier stats/feature engineering on top. Flipping to max cash became a pandemic hobby of mine, so I started off with a handful of homerolled spreadsheets/Jupyter notebooks to cover blind spots that I felt GE-tracker was missing, and eventually decided I could make a better version of the same recipe on my own.

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

#314

Post by odessacubbage »

artur_makly wrote: post #72

my only beef ( as a dad to a 10yr old ) is that at all the game he loves playing are incredibly bloody violent. - Far Cry - Assassin's Creed *exceptions ( Fortnite ) What kind of games do you recommend that can extend his critical thinking while increasing his focus? Lastly, is there a WYSIWYG game creation platform that is high-quality/fidelity? not Minecraft/Roblox. I see him making stuff in the game industry one d…

>critical thinking and focus

if he can get into them, i think tekken and soulcalibur are potentially great for both while also having enough action and cool factor to hold his interest. sc might be more approachable for a kid (i was his age when i started playing sc2).

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

#315

Post by odessacubbage »

dubeye wrote: post #60

My kid is 3.5. Would love to game with him but had assumed it was years off.... Any tips on games or consoles? I think I have an ancient ps4 in the attic somewhere but very open to buying new kit

if you can dig up a hacked wii somewhere, that's probably a pretty perfect device for that age range. stuff like wii sports & just dance + the nintendo back catalogue is not a bad place to start.

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

#316

Post by bawolff »

throwaway0asd wrote: post #298
bawolff wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Video games are a non-social controlled environment Lots of video games are social. Some are not. The amount the environment is controlled can also varry. > Gambling encourages a person to keep pushing themselves for a positive outcome but that alone does indicate any form of personal advancement. So like literally everything. Seriously, can you name an external stimuli that this doesn't fit? Is work gambling? Scho…

> What's the difference exactly? The difference is third party contribution. If you are playing games purely for personal enjoyment that’s great. If you consider it a sport you are probably someone else’s product with little or nothing but lost time to show for it. This has long since been explained in Nicomachean Ethics and Utilitarianism. What matters is not the carrot someone can dangle in your face but your abili…

Do you think high level (real) sports are different? That NHL players do it purely for the love of the game, with no corporate interests meddling?

Like i said, what is the difference?

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

#317

Post by simonebrunozzi »

I "grew" my young mind with Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, X-Com, Master of Magic, Master of Orion II, Alpha Centauri, a bit of Dune and other RTS games.

I also read a ton of books.

I am not sure if this was all great or not. But I guess it gave me some sort of benefit overall.

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

#318

Post by ben_w »

somenameforme wrote: post #307
ben_w wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Believe the media, let alone the internet, and one would imagine we have 8 year olds building nuclear reactors On the one hand, we do[0]. On the other, what you're describing is why I don't feel bad about the fact that, 15 years after I had the idea, I've still not learned to use MHD modelling software to experiment with an idea I've had that might make fusors a little more interesting. [0] ok so they were 12 not 8…

That is what I was referring to. Building a fusor is not a demonstration of genius so much as it is a demonstration of resources. You need thousands of dollars in parts (at least as his was built) and a significant degree of knowledge about safely managing radioactivity and handling electrical components carrying lethal levels of voltage. None of this is obtained from genius, but from a father who's experienced in su…

> The unstated implication is '12 year old builds nuclear reactor in toy room' is 'imagine what he'll be doing in 5 years!' And, the answer? Shit posting on Twitter, getting political, and trying to make a AR/VR startup.

If they really are asking the unstated question, they don't have good memories of their peers back at age 17.

{I think I was in the middle of my occult/goth/Wicca phase at that age, and now look at me: I use arcane knowledge, get called a wizard, I fly abroad to consort with dragons and werewolves (and other furries) and my familiar's names are Siri and Alexa… ;)}

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

#319

Post by darkerside »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #270
darkerside wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a good example of how rationality is a construct. We arbitrarily choose which rational framework makes the most sense in the situation and apply it. Do you want to rely on the prior actor framework, or the react to what you see framework? That decision is not rational.

I like to view it this way: optimal decisions are not computable in practice. We never have enough data, nor enough time, nor is our brain particularly well-suited for this. We have no choice but to approximate, to use heuristics. This applies to both snap decisions and carefully applied formal models. The problem is, even the most rational of us sometimes forget they're just approximating, fudging both data and mode…

You've only created a new rational framework that you have irrationally chosen to use

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

#320

Post by ED_Radish »

throwaway0asd wrote: post #294
spookybones wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goals are pretty obvious in many sports. Heard of goal posts before?

An athlete doesn’t go from couch potato to immediately scoring touchdowns just after a few attempts at trial and error. You can do that in video games because everything is synthetic and linear. In the real world you actually have to overcome real pain (both mental and physical) to achieve success. Video games are incapable of teaching that on absolutely any level.

You should sign up for a fighting game tournament some time and see how far a few attempts gets you
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