We're all heard about the kid who killed all his close family members and friends, ate everything in the house – even stuff that's not food – and then chucked himself out of the window. Apparently after seconds of searching, the police officer in charge of the case found a copy of Grand Theft Auto and all of a sudden everything made sense – video games were to blame for this heinous crime.
Granted, this isn't a real story, but it's something that happens quite a lot. People love to focus on the evils of video games, especially when it comes to the soul-stealing nature of MMOs. Who knew that, actually, they could be very good for you? Researchers at the North Carolina State University have discovered that spending a little time in Azeroth could actually improve your cognitive ability.
Two groups of adults who had scored poorly on cognitive tests were gathered, the first told to play World of Warcraft for forteen hours over the following fortnight and the second told to go about their normal business. The first group showed an improvement, the second didn't.
“We chose World of Warcraft because it has attributes we felt may produce benefits – it is a cognitively challenging game in a socially interactive environment that presents users with novel situations,” Dr. Anne McLaughlin, co-author on a paper based around the study, explained. “We found there were improvements, but it depended on each participant’s baseline cognitive functioning level.”
“Among participants who scored well on baseline cognitive functioning tests, there was no significant improvement after playing WoW – they were already doing great,” she continued. “But we saw significant improvement in both spatial ability and focus for participants who scored low on the initial baseline tests.” Pre- and post-game testing showed no change for participants on memory.
