Female Gamers Have Better Spatial Skills
Researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered a "previously unknown sex difference in spatial attention," finding that "on average, women are not quite as good at rapidly switching attention among different objects." However, an experiment conducted showed that both sexes' spatial skills can be improved by playing video games and that women can actually catch up to men by doing so. According to Professor Ian Spence, Director of the Engineering Psychology Laboratory in the Department of Psychology:
"[Video games] may cause the expression of previously inactive genes which control the development of neural connections that are necessary for spatial attention. Clearly, something dramatic is happening in the brain when we see marked improvements in spatial skills after only ten hours of game playing and these improvements are maintained for many months."
What does it all mean? That playing video games can be used to improve spatial skills that are necessary for ordinary tasks, "such as reading a map, driving a car, assembling a barbeque, or learning advanced math." The results of the study could lead to more women working in mathematical sciences and engineering.
"Since spatial skills play an important role in these professions, bringing the spatial skills of young women up to the level of their male counterparts could help to change the gender balance in these fields that are so important to our economic health," added Spence.
Game on, girls!
Playing Video Games Reduces Sex Differences In Spatial Skills [Medical News Today]
[via GameLife]
Lazy Panda
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 6 October 2007
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: female gamers, science, spatial skills
Now see, if my parents had just bought me that Atari 2600, I'd be a bankrolled engineer like my brother, instead of a talented, underpaid editor. I TOLD them it helped your eye-hand coordination, but no dice. Maybe I'm catching up now... and maybe I can convince them to get me a Wii for my mid-life crisis. I mean, Christmas.
I love studies like this, that show really interesting things that come from videogames. Gamespot had an article on this, but they also had a quote that's oddly missing from the above link.
"I have a feeling there will be reluctance on the part of funders to fund these things because I think the reaction of most people is, 'That can't possibly be true. Playing video games can't possibly be good for you,' because of the negative you get from the violent and aggressive aspects of some games. ... I hope that we'll get funding to pursue this in more depth, but I'm not sure that we'll get it easily."
(http://www.gamespot.com/news/6180510.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;3)
It's just disappointing.