Video Games Help Develop Skills

A new study reports that players of video games develop better visual skills than non-players. “Experienced players of these games are 30 percent to 50 percent better than nonplayers at taking in everything that happens around them, according to the research, which appears today in the journal Nature. They identify objects in their peripheral vision, perceiving numerous objects without having to count them, switch attention rapidly and track many items at once. Nor are players simply faster at these tasks. First-person action games increase the brain’s capacity to spread attention over a wide range of events.