Score! Video gamers may learn visual tasks more quickly

Video games not only sharpen the visual processing skills of frequent players, they might also improve the brain’s ability to learn those skills, according to a new study. Gamers showed faster consolidation of learning when moving from one visual task to the next than did non-gamers.

Read the complete article from Brown University here: Score! Video gamers may learn visual tasks more quickly

The full text journal article from PLOS ONE can be found here: Frequent Video Game Players Resist Perceptual Interference

Why Super Mario Runs from Left to Right

There may be a fundamental bias in the way people prefer to see moving items depicted in pictures according to research. An analysis of photos of people and objects in motion revealed a common left-to-right bias. Psychologist Dr Peter Walker of Lancaster University said this widespread evidence for such a left-to-right bias could indicate a possible fundamental bias for visual motion, and would explain why all the main characters in the side-scrolling video games popular in the 1980s and 1990s (eg Super Mario) run from left to right.

Read the complete article from Lancaster University here: Why Super Mario Runs from Left to Right

Playing for Words: Children with dyslexia have an easier time learning to read after playing action video games that don’t incorporate reading

Shooting silly-looking rabbits with a plunger gun in a video game called Rayman Raving Rabbids can improve the reading ability of dyslexic children, according to a new study publishing in the March 18 issue of Current Biology—despite the fact that the game contained no reading or linguistic components. The counterintuitive finding supports the idea that dyslexia is not only a disorder of linguistic centers of the brain, but may also involve areas that govern attention and motor skills.

Read the complete article from The Scientist (and find a link to the full text journal article) here: Playing for Words