

Do Video Games Make You Smarter? - mdariani
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2011/09/12/do-video-games-make-you-smarter-perception-cognition/

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wccrawford
The 'maybe not' articles are so pointless. They bring up a bunch of theories
to attempt to poke holes in things, and in the mean time they're even less
rigorous than the tests they are trying to poke holes in.

I don't think most gamers even -care- if video games make them better at other
things.

From personal experience, I find I have a few talents that the rest of my
family doesn't have. My reaction times and eye-hand coordination are much
better. It's quite common for me to knock something off a table and simply
catch it on the way down, where the rest of my family would simply watch it
and then pick it up afterwards. It's not something I think about. It just
happens. It has amazed more than a few people.

My map skills are much better, as well as my pathfinding/path-remembering
skills. If I drive a route twice, I've pretty much got a lock on it. I can
also usually point directly at some landmark that's no longer visible, and
I've usually got a good idea where North is. None of the rest of my family has
any of this.

And puzzle-solving... I'd like to attribute that to video games, but the fact
is that I just love it, and I'll do it no matter the medium. So I can't really
say video games in particular did it, except that there are a LOT of puzzles
in the games I play. Which certainly can't hurt.

You learn best by doing. And if what you're doing in a game maps 1:1 with
another skill, then you're going to get better at it. It's that simple.

