Video Games Aren't Just Fun--They Enhance Learning Abilities, Too

Previous studies have shown that playing video games can help improve certain learning capabilities. Now, recent findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reiterate what prior studies have shown: video games could help learning even outside the concept of the sport alone.

Study co-author Daphne Baveiler, a research professor with the department of brain & cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester in New York, discussed the "beneficial effects of playing video games on vision, attention, and now learning," via Health Day, specifically focusing on "perceptual learning."

For the study, researchers launched several different experiments to determine what happens to young adults--both skilled and unskilled, with an average age of 22--when they played video games.

One experiment involved the training of 26 players for 50 hours on action video games, like "Call of Duty 2" and "Unreal Tournament 2004," while researchers then compared them to players on non-action video games, such as "The Sims."

Findings revealed that those who played the action games were more likely to show improvements in not just their skills but also their abilities to learn in certain areas.

"I think they are learning how to better apply themselves to certain types of tasks," added Aaron Seitz, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, in a news release. 

For future studies, researchers are hoping to explore just what happens in the brain while action video games are enhancing learning capabilities.

"I would also like to test the limits of what video games help you learn," she concluded.