
Cognitive motor performance in Starcraft 2 begins declining at age 24 - graublau
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/age-related-brain-decline-starts-at-24-1.2611257
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baddox
> With Starcraft, Thompson said, the physical demands are minimal, as the game
> is played with a keyboard and mouse.

That's a fairly strange way to define "physical demands." It's kind of like
saying "for playing guitar, the physical demands are minimal, as it's played
with your fingers and perhaps a small pick." Both activities are not just
about reflexes and "strategy," because finger strength and muscle memory play
a big role in both. Of course, muscle memory occurs (as far as I know) mostly
in the brain, but I would still consider that a physical demand distinct from
reflexes and strategy.

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andrewljohnson
At the casual level, it's likely that you will never reach a plateau where
this study has a measurable effect on your game. A casual gamer will never
practice enough such that the rate of cognitive decline couldn't be counter-
acted by practice.

You can reach the top quartile of Starcraft 2 players through practice,
overall strategy, and learning the current meta-game and tactics. Your twitch
muscles only become differentiators at a much higher level than 99% of people
will achieve.

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iopq
top quartile is useless, it's not even master league master league is top 4%
and it still doesn't matter there as much

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l33tbro
My ability to play Starcraft well may have peaked at 24, but the leaps and
bounds in my intelligence/acuity/personal development began at 24.

Edit: above comment based on OP's original headline

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id
While I totally believe this to be true, I can't imagine myself to become much
smarter once I've reached 24. I feel like I already know way more than many
people older than me, well aware that I'm probably terribly wrong.

I mean, what ground-breaking stuff did you learn since? I would really like to
read some anecdotes.

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whiddershins
Only everything important. Sorry to be flip but it is so hard to sum up. I
knew absolutely nothing at age 24. I had no idea how to deal with people, how
to manage relationships, my energy, or long term goals. How to balance and
prioritize. I am nearing 40 and feel I am finally taking the first baby steps
towards having even the slightest clue about what's going on. I'm pretty sure
I will die before I get most of it straight. If you've mastered all the skills
you need by 24 you've either set your goals on the wrong thing or you are a
prophet. But that's just one man's humble opinion.

~~~
id
Either that or I never thought of the possibility that one could actually
master these kinds of things to some extent.

~~~
whiddershins
I enthusiastically recommend "How to win friends and influence people" and
"war of art"

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sologoub
I'm hoping this article left out a lot of criteria from this description of
the methodology:

"The study analyzed the way 3,305 people, aged 16 to 44, played the game
against a single random opponent of similar skill, in order to measure the
gamers' cognitive motor performance."

The "similar skill" is an incredibly subjective measure. Especially if they
relied on the user's scores recorded on battle.net. As someone else noted,
they really need to control for the fact that younger people have a lot more
free time to play and practice.

A good follow-up study would be to follow a set of gamers for a couple of
years as they cross this hypothetical threshold to see if the results still
persist and the overall performance decreases.

Of course, they'd need to control for a number of environmental factors and
hardware differences, as gaming rigs change quite quickly.

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ovulator
It seems that a of these comments are taking offense, and equating cognitive
motor performance = intelligence.

The article describes it as: "Cognitive motor performance is how quickly your
brain reacts to things happening around you"

Meaning it is measuring your reaction time, you already know what to do in the
situation, you don't have to think about it, you react.

Which is why they elderly are so dangerous behind the wheel, they didn't
forget how to drive, they know that they can't run the red light, but the
amount of time it takes to process that the red light is there and then to
press on the break increases.

I find it fascinating that that this decline starts to show so early.

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personZ
I don't think people are taking "offense", but rather smell the faint aroma of
yet another non-repeatable study of very dubious quality. There are many very
direct, easily quantified and repeated ways of measuring things like response
time, StarCraft not being one of them.

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kolinko
Did they control for having a real-life job?

I can easily imagine this effect being due to people having less time to
practice, and due to less time spent practicing, and playing more casually due
to 8 hours every day spent working.

~~~
robryan
Well, I think what they are saying is, assuming your opponent has equal game
knowledge and practise and in general has a similar overall strategic decision
making that a younger person can probably outdo you with the very short term
decision making and faster control.

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Mithaldu
The only important sentence from the article besides the title:

"It appeared the older players compensated for their slower speed by making
better use of features such as shortcuts and by using simpler strategies."

~~~
brianmcc
I wonder if there's an extent to which older players have, due to experience,
simply more tools at their disposal and it's a form of constant evaluation of
the apt ones to use at any given time which contributes to reduction in
physical performance.

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ojbyrne
Note that the article agrees with many of the comments here about the fact
that "cognitive motor performance" isn't everything there is to
intelligence...

"I think we're adapting without knowing it," he added. "A lot of us are still
able to maintain our skills."

In fact, that held true for older Starcraft players also, when only their
score was taken into account.

"We had a lot of people performing at a level higher than their speed would
otherwise suggest."

~~~
marvin
I think there is a huge possibility of a methodologial hole here. If older
players play better with less pure technical brilliance, this could also be
because they have realized that reflexes are less important - and hence spend
less time training their reflexes and more on higher-level strategy. Skills
are perishable, so this in itself doesn't demonstrate that motor skills
deteriorate with age.

I'm reminded of the cliché of the 17-year old guitar player who equates high
tempo with good music. A similar study could reach the exact same conclusion
in this ield.

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slm_HN
"Starcraft is like high-speed chess."

Ok, but what's really like high-speed chess is... speed chess, played with a
chess clock. Five minute chess, three minute chess and even one minute chess,
those are all like high-speed chess.

~~~
Selfcommit
Even chess with a chess clock is like a walk in the park compared to SC2.

In an average game,the first 5 minutes has already decided the match.

~~~
a8000
That is not true at all, the first five minutes will decide most of the
early/mid game strategy. But if the build orders are executed flawlessly the
match is far from decided at this point.

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tempestn
Interesting article, but it's clear they've never played Risk:

"Starcraft 2 is a popular strategy game, similar in concept to Risk, where
players compete to build armies and conquer a science fictional world."

It's tough to imagine two games more _dissimilar_ in gameplay than Starcraft
II and Risk. Also I'm pretty sure Risk isn't played in a "science fictional
world"...

~~~
robryan
I disagree, at the most basic level they are both about allocating resources
most efficiently.

~~~
tempestn
OK, I should have said they're the most dissimilar _strategy_ games I can
imagine.

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FD3SA
I'm sure Darwin, aged 50 when he finished _Origin of Species_ , would agree.

Perhaps it takes a slow mind for man to think more deeply about problems, in
order to arrive at an elegant solution.

Hopefuly a few decades after retiring from professional gaming, these
Starcraft 2 players will produce magnum opera of their own.

~~~
Blahah
Plural of 'magnum opus' is 'magna opera' \- the adjective has to take the same
case (accusative plural) as the noun.

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USNetizen
Performance in terms of raw speed, maybe, but my cognitive abilities as they
are today really only started when I was in my mid-to-late 20's. Speed is no
substitute for skill and perspective, which I have learned the hard way many
times.

Plus, countless other studies have shown that our "soft skills" (crystallized
intelligence) like communication, general knowledge, vocabulary, leadership,
inter-personal relations, etc. improve BEGINNING at age 25 and continues
growing well into our 60's. I have found this particular intelligence to be of
far more value in business than the "speed" of my youth ever was.

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juliocc
I refuse to accept that playing Startcraft is comprehensive measure of my
brain's performance.

~~~
dang
Yes. Professional headline writers regularly exaggerate these things. It's a
subgenre of linkbait.

The HN guidelines call for changing a title when it's misleading or linkbait.
I rewrote this one accordingly. Suggestions for further improvement are
welcome.

User comments that suggest more accurate, less baity titles are often helpful
in cases like this. We're working on a bit of software to make it easier for
people to suggest title (and url) changes. It should be ready soon and we'll
do a Tell HN post about it.

~~~
baddox
I don't see anything incorrect about this headline. "Age-related brain decline
starts at 24" is a pretty safe title that accurately represents the contents
of the article. The subtitle "Popular game Starcraft 2 used as a measure of
brain speed" provides additional clarification, as subtitles are intended to
do.

~~~
dang
In my view, the headline is linkbait, plus it's misleading to use the word
"brain" for one kind of cognitive reaction. There are probably some brain
functions that are most active in babies, but that wouldn't make it correct to
say "brain decline begins in infancy".

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devindotcom
I read this yesterday and rejected it for coverage by us... the small sample
size, the single strategy for measurement, the questionable value of that
measurement, and the questionable extrapolation of that value all contributed
to what I would call some pretty bad science.

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taurath
Ability to react extremely quickly to a complete unknown situation goes down,
I would imagine because there are more situations/memories that an older
person's brain needs to query.

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0xdeadbeefbabe
Real time strategy games like starcraft are stupid because of the wasted
cycles. The game can grow too complex for even a high capacity sub 24 year old
easily. I'd rather program my harvester, grunt, [choose your metaphor] than
micromanage them or let real people control them.

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carsongross
Huh.

Right when wisdom and perspective start emerging...

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catshirt
as a 25 year old spending way too much time playing sc2 this explains a lot

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zobzu
you were so much better last year. ;-)

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orasis
Alternative Hypothesis: Perhaps older people just don't give as much of a
shit.

