Video Games Improving Vision
Summary:
Researchers monitored a group of 24 children from the Oklahoma and Tennessee Schools for the Blind as they played video games. The participants were screened beforehand and most were shown to have vision below the legal blindness limit of 20/200 as well as poor peripheral vision. The students were divided into 3 groups: one where they played a puzzle/control game similar to Tetris; one where they played an action game called Ratchet and Clank; and one where they played the game designed by the experimenters. Each game was played up close to large screen where a projector cast the image of the game. The goal of the researcher's game was to track multiple objects and respond when another object appeared at random. The point of the game was to force the players to spread their attention over a wide theater of vision with an emphasis on the edges of their vision.
The groups that played the Tetris-like game and the custom designed researcher's game were shown to have as much as a 50% increase in their peripheral vision after an 8 hour session playing their respective games. To be clear, these improvements included better perception of moving objects in their periphery, identifying specific letters within a field of letters, and finding specific objects in distracting/cluttered scenes. The improvements were also resistant to decay over time as the students still showed the same visual improvements when re-tested a year later.
Discussion:
These results complement years of research that indicate that action video games directly improve cognitive functions like attention and perception as the player actively shifts their attention from irrelevant to relevant stimuli and unpredictable events. The benefits of video games on vision do not necessarily pertain to me as an individual with better-than-average vision but they may benefit those close to me. My girlfriend, for example, has eyesight which has been deteriorating over time despite her youth. Over the course of 16 years her eye glasses prescription has transitioned from -1.25 to -7.50. Without her glasses, her field of central and peripheral vision extends only about 6 inches from her face. She's played video games before during the same 16 year period but often games that require very little rapid response, action, or detection of unpredictable stimuli like in the experiment. Perhaps if she were to spend an hour or more a day for a total of at least 7 hours a week playing video games of that caliber she could slow the deterioration of her eyesight.
Article:
http://neurosciencenews.com/video-game-vision-5632/
Researchers monitored a group of 24 children from the Oklahoma and Tennessee Schools for the Blind as they played video games. The participants were screened beforehand and most were shown to have vision below the legal blindness limit of 20/200 as well as poor peripheral vision. The students were divided into 3 groups: one where they played a puzzle/control game similar to Tetris; one where they played an action game called Ratchet and Clank; and one where they played the game designed by the experimenters. Each game was played up close to large screen where a projector cast the image of the game. The goal of the researcher's game was to track multiple objects and respond when another object appeared at random. The point of the game was to force the players to spread their attention over a wide theater of vision with an emphasis on the edges of their vision.
The groups that played the Tetris-like game and the custom designed researcher's game were shown to have as much as a 50% increase in their peripheral vision after an 8 hour session playing their respective games. To be clear, these improvements included better perception of moving objects in their periphery, identifying specific letters within a field of letters, and finding specific objects in distracting/cluttered scenes. The improvements were also resistant to decay over time as the students still showed the same visual improvements when re-tested a year later.
Discussion:
These results complement years of research that indicate that action video games directly improve cognitive functions like attention and perception as the player actively shifts their attention from irrelevant to relevant stimuli and unpredictable events. The benefits of video games on vision do not necessarily pertain to me as an individual with better-than-average vision but they may benefit those close to me. My girlfriend, for example, has eyesight which has been deteriorating over time despite her youth. Over the course of 16 years her eye glasses prescription has transitioned from -1.25 to -7.50. Without her glasses, her field of central and peripheral vision extends only about 6 inches from her face. She's played video games before during the same 16 year period but often games that require very little rapid response, action, or detection of unpredictable stimuli like in the experiment. Perhaps if she were to spend an hour or more a day for a total of at least 7 hours a week playing video games of that caliber she could slow the deterioration of her eyesight.
Article:
http://neurosciencenews.com/video-game-vision-5632/
After years of parents telling children that video games are bad, we are finally starting to see research proving the benefits of this entertaining activity. I have heard of the benefits regarding attention from video games, but i have not heard about video games effect on vision. The results of this study is interesting to me because i have never considered video games as helpful for vision but it really makes sense. It is a way that children can focus on peripheral vision because of multiple stimuli needed to be focused on within a large area. This is really an interesting idea because kids love video games. This is a great way to get kids to improve their vision and attention without them even realizing it.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Colton! Indeed, there are few events more exciting than giving sight to the blind. And as Danny pointed out, it's also great that these video game treatments could be enjoyable, unlike so many medical therapies. However, there is growing consensus in the literature suggesting a causal link between playing video games and increased aggression. This effect has been demonstrated with even seeming low violent games such as Ratchet & Clank, in which players bash their cartoon opponents with a wrench to earn points (or "bolts"). I would, however, tend to think that the benefits of possessing better visual acuity would outweigh the risks of increased externalizing behaviors. It is interesting how video games had this tremendous impact on the participants peripheral vision. I wonder why other forms of visual stimulation would not be just as effecting (for instance, watching a movie).
ReplyDeleteChristopher Mullin
This post is interesting to me for a number of reasons; a peer of mine is a Video-game and Media design major at her university and she and I had never thought of vision being a positively impacted factor. This research is interesting and almost ground breaking for people with below-average vision who can benefit from training their eyes to focus on relevant stimuli. I do wonder how these results can compare to deterioration of average to above average vision from staring at a screen that is a fixed distance for a long period of time. While parents telling kids to not sit so close or watch so much tv is a parenting tactic, it also has some validity. In class we learned that staring at an object a fixed distance away for long period of time can cause the muscles that bend the lens of the eye to relax and stop adjusting our vision.
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