C green games 2011

In a pilot study in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders, we noted increased social behaviour and increases in fusiform gyrus activity in response to emotional words and emoticons during a six week, pro-social on-line game playing period. Although existing research is limited, we believe that a growing number of clinical applications for video-game play will emerge over time.

Video games exploit well-established principles of motivation and learning that have been established by experimental psychology and neuroscience research.

These forms of game-like training have already strengthened or recovered the abilities and improved the prospects and quality of life of millions of individuals. There is, of course, a convergence in the design of successful video games and effective plasticity-based brain training exercises, because enthusiastic engagement by a gamer or trainee is a key goal in both arenas.

However, because education- or rehabilitation-directed training is necessarily designed to address neurological impairments that apply to specific learning problems or for specific clinical indications, there are inevitably practical constraints on such exercise designs. It should also be noted that the educational and medical applications of brain training are most effectively deployed by using internet-based strategies, so that trainee compliance and progress can be monitored, and by applying internet-delivered assessment tools to assure that generalized, targeted benefits are being achieved.

Video games do not implement these monitoring and outcome-assessment methods. These game-like computer-based training programmes represent the first wave in an impending revolution for brain training in schools, medicine and in the broader society. In the future, such computer-guided brain training may be employed to substantially improve the performance of almost every child in school.

In parallel, using this approach to drive strengthening, ameliorative or corrective changes that increase resilience in people who are at risk for certain illnesses, or to treat patients whose brain function is impaired by illness, is rapidly emerging as an important new dimension of psychiatric and neurological medicine.

We must remember that the application of this technology in humans has a potentially destructive side. It is easy to impair human abilities by training, even while other abilities are being improved or refined. Furthermore, video games shall continue to evolve in forms that are increasingly addictive.

Time spent on screen-delivered media can be expected to steal more time away from real life. Video game attraction strategies that have been empirically developed to capture the hearts and minds of the player are already being more extensively applied by the persuaders than by the educators or the medical practitioners.

The Genie neuroscience-guided brain plasticity is out of the bottle, for good and — if we let it loose without more guidance and restraint — almost certainly, for ill. Games offer significant promise for education. They use many of the techniques that a truly exceptional teacher uses. For example, they have clear objectives that are set at multiple difficulty levels to adapt to the prior knowledge and pace of each learner; they require learning to be active, with immediate feedback and sufficient practice to the point of mastery; practice on a game continues until much of what is learned becomes automatic; mastery of a game is reinforced extrinsically, by points and levels, and intrinsically, by a feeling of accomplishment and social status; levels of progress are well-sequenced, such that success at later levels is contingent upon mastering earlier levels; games encourage distributed practice across time; and games enable the gamer to practice the same concepts in different contexts, therefore encouraging transfer of skills.

Unfortunately, games have yet to find a way to live up to their promise. Authors such as James Gee have documented the theoretical value of games for education.

Studies of educational software demonstrate that children do learn from playing educational games. Nonetheless, the amount of money spent on educational games is a tiny fraction of the amount spent on a commercial entertainment game. The mechanisms by which video-game play triggers such widespread brain plasticity remain to be elucidated. And because behavioural and non-invasive brain imaging methods can only take us so far towards this goal, pharmacological studies in humans and complementary studies in animal models yes, rats playing Call of Duty — or at least the animal equivalent may move the field forward.

Beyond the clear theoretical interest, findings from such studies will be of great practical benefit when attempting to design games that result in transferable learning, be it for rehabilitation purposes, education or training. One of the remaining challenges is to better understand which game components are crucial for promoting a given skill in a particular individual.

Although our current knowledge is at the group level — for example, some overarching game components, such as the need to constantly predict when and where events of interest may occur, are crucial in training attention and executive functions — the most efficient learning regimens are unlikely to be one-size fits-all.

Games in the future will have the ability to gather data about the player while simultaneously building the exact game needed in real time. A handful of pilot training schools are already exploring this type of highly personalized tutoring.

First of all, objective diagnostic criteria for gaming addiction should be established. In addition, we need to better understand the differences between pure on-line gaming addiction and on-line gaming addiction that is co-morbid with other psychiatric disorders. This is important as some investigators have argued that internet addiction does not exist but is merely a symptom of psychiatric illnesses such as major depressive disorder or ADHD.

Second, the vulnerabilities to on-line gaming addiction, including genetic and cognitive factors, need to be more clearly defined. Third, standard and effective treatments need to be developed and validated. Several pilot studies have suggested that the antidepressant drugs citalopram and bupropion may be effective for the treatment of on-line gaming addiction.

Similarly, cognitive behavioural therapy CBT has been reported to be effective for reducing internet use time and improving daily life patterns and family coherence. However, future studies on on-line gaming addiction treatment will require larger populations and longer follow-up periods. In addition, the relationship between clinical symptoms and changes in brain activity needs to be more clearly defined.

Finally, studies of internet-game play are currently somewhat polarized and this area of research is likely to be improved if investigators acknowledged both the potential beneficial and harmful effects of video games. Scientists and technologists have now developed practical strategies that strongly engage a large proportion of people from all over the world especially those of younger ages at a level of positive motivation that can progress to addiction in many of them.

Modern societies have come to be massively media-engaged and media-dependent, over an incredibly short time-span in our history. The application of motivationally-powerful strategies to help children and adults change their behaviours and brains for the better has already begun in earnest.

Because of their great didactic efficiencies, and because brain plasticity-based exercises can improve the performance characteristics of the brain of almost every child, these new game-like tools shall be at the core of a schooling revolution. They might also be widely deployed to treat the specific neurological problems that characterize psychiatric and neurological illnesses, and the normal ageing process. How can we intelligently control this development?

First, we should work to further integrate cognitive neuroscience with educational science and clinical medicine. Our understanding of the differences between the operational brains of normal versus developmentally, neurologically or psychiatrically impaired individuals is rapidly increasing, as is our understanding of the neural bases of human intelligence and ability.

This knowledge will provide the foundation for both designing and confirming the effectiveness of targeted training tools. Second, the entry of new game-like training programmes into schools and clinics must be based on controlled, high-standard trials. The scientific community and the public should insist that any medical claims about training programmes are based on formal review processes by the US Food and Drug Administration or equivalent.

Third, the public would benefit from standards organizations that objectively quantify the positive and negative consequences of the intensive use of specific video games. Finally, we should intensify our efforts to determine how our growing screen dependence in our everyday lives is changing us in ways that both strengthen and weaken us, as individuals and as a society.

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing us right now is the trap of biased and dichotomous thinking. Most people including many scientists are either critics or proponents of games and gaming research. This has a detrimental effect on the field, and serves to increase rhetoric and to limit research.

I have proposed that there are at least five dimensions along which video games can have effects on brain and behaviour — the content, context, structure and mechanics of games, and the time spent game playing.

When all these dimensions are taken into account it is often possible to explain how research findings that initially seem to be contradictory are actually congruent. The amount of time that people spend on recreational games can have effects on them, regardless of specific game features.

Some studies have demonstrated that the amount of time spent playing games predicts poorer school performance. This effect is likely to be due to displacement of other academically beneficial activities.

Bring the Manhunters to Justice This is an interesting enough title, where the player will spend their time going around a range of game modes taking on various enemies as Hal Jordan i. Overall rating: 6. XBox Playstation 3. Marvel Super Hero Squad. GameFabrique XBox , 3DS, Playstation 3. Find articles by D. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer.

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Abstract While humans have an incredible capacity to acquire new skills and alter their behavior as a result of experience, enhancements in performance are typically narrowly restricted to the parameters of the training environment, with little evidence of generalization to different, even seemingly highly related, tasks.

Within- and between-individual differences in learning The primary focus of this review is extrinsic factors in learning — in other words, the characteristics that training regimens need to incorporate in order to successfully enhance behavioral performance. Open in a separate window. Figure 1. Learning is highly specific to the training conditions. To generalize or not to generalize?

Hierarchical learning Variety is an essential characteristic of training regimens that lead to more general learning. Figure 2. Needs a short title. Action video game play enhances attentional control Over the past two decades, myriad reports have documented the beneficial effects of playing video games [ 7 , 48 , 49 ]. Selective attention in space The ability to focus attention on a target and ignore distracting information is the essence of selective attention.

Figure 3. Improved selective spatial attention after action game play. Selective attention in time Action game play also enhances the ability to select relevant information over time.

Selective attention to objects A third aspect of attention documented to change for the better after action game play has been attention to objects [ 56 , 60 ]. Toward more efficient attentional control The proposal that action game play enhances top-down aspects of attention by allowing gamers to more flexibly allocate their resources is supported by several independent sources.

Sustained attention and impulsivity Selective visual attention is not the only aspect of attention that changes for the better.

Not all aspects of attention are altered Action games are literally full of abrupt onsets of highly salient visual objects, which are typically also very behaviorally relevant for example, an enemy that springs out of a door. Summary of effects of action video game experience The overall literature appears clear in that the positive effects of action game play are greatest on tasks where performance is limited by top-down attention or the processes that control and regulate attentional allocation and resource management.

Learning to learn as the goal of general learning We conclude by considering the role of enhanced attentional control in explaining the observed differences in behavior noted as a result of action video game play. Figure 4. Training study design. Box 1 Methodological issues in cognitive training studies. Acknowledgements We thank Ted Jacques with help with figure preparation.

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