Neuroscience
Prospect magazine's latest (and free!) cover feature provides a welcome defence of video games, arguing that they are more intellectually, socially and aesthetically stimulating than many critics seem to realise.
Consider the game "Eve" which involves players banding together to build spaceships. "One of the first of the largest class of such ships took a consortium of around 22 guilds —just under 4,000 players in total — eight months to complete, a task that involved complexities of training, materials, role allocation and management that would put many companies to shame."
Or marvel at the sheer freedom and reality available in GTA IV: "It's quite a thing...to be moved by the beams of an unreal sun setting behind a not-quite-Manhattan skyline".
Tom Chatfield's article is in part a response to the writings of people like neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, whose latest book argues that increasing amounts of screen time could be harmful to children's moral and intellectual development. He attacks her prose: "a near-continuous train wreck of redundancies, mixed metaphors and self-contradictions" and believes her arguments will only serve to "harden opinion on both sides of the debate".
However, having celebrated the complexity of video games and provided a refreshingly realistic account of what they involve, Chatfield does end with a word of caution: "the doomsayers are right in one important respect. If we do not learn to balance the new worlds we are building with our living culture, we may lose something of ourselves."
Link to Prospect magazine article.
Link to Susan Greenfield discussing her new book on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
The truth about video games
Prospect magazine's latest (and free!) cover feature provides a welcome defence of video games, arguing that they are more intellectually, socially and aesthetically stimulating than many critics seem to realise.Consider the game "Eve" which involves players banding together to build spaceships. "One of the first of the largest class of such ships took a consortium of around 22 guilds —just under 4,000 players in total — eight months to complete, a task that involved complexities of training, materials, role allocation and management that would put many companies to shame."
Or marvel at the sheer freedom and reality available in GTA IV: "It's quite a thing...to be moved by the beams of an unreal sun setting behind a not-quite-Manhattan skyline".
Tom Chatfield's article is in part a response to the writings of people like neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, whose latest book argues that increasing amounts of screen time could be harmful to children's moral and intellectual development. He attacks her prose: "a near-continuous train wreck of redundancies, mixed metaphors and self-contradictions" and believes her arguments will only serve to "harden opinion on both sides of the debate".
However, having celebrated the complexity of video games and provided a refreshingly realistic account of what they involve, Chatfield does end with a word of caution: "the doomsayers are right in one important respect. If we do not learn to balance the new worlds we are building with our living culture, we may lose something of ourselves."
Link to Prospect magazine article.
Link to Susan Greenfield discussing her new book on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Feast
Our round-up of the latest juicy tit-bits from the world of psychology: The Greenfield saga continues. Recall that Baroness Susan Greenfield recently restated to New Scientist her fears that technology is harming children's brains, and that Professor...
- Is The Internet Changing Our Brains?
We hear so much these days about the plasticity of the human brain - its ability to adapt to changing demands and circumstances. If our neural architecture is forever being redrawn to meet our daily challenges then it makes you wonder about the inordinate...
- It Matters How Much Blood Video Games Have In Them
Hype surrounding the global release of the gangster-themed video game Grand Theft Auto IV has renewed the long-standing debate over whether violent games make players more aggressive. Now Christopher Barlett and colleagues have provided a fresh angle...
- This Is My Idea Of Fun Monkeys Playing Video Games
Swinging in the back yard Pull up in your fast car Whistling my name Open up a beer and Say get over here And play a video game Video Games ------Lana Del Rey from Fig.1, Hosokawa & Watanabe (2012). It's you, it's you, it's all for...
- Mirror Neurons & Video Games
Been reading about mirror neurons a lot lately; first in the April issue of Scientific American Mind (abstract only) and now in the New York Times (from June 4, subscription may be required). SciAm suggests that mirror neurons are how we learn from the...