What would your mother say if she thought your video games were actually good for you? Maybe she would rely on the old myth that they will make you go blind.
Researcher Val Shute from Florida State University ran a study where they compared Valves Portal 2 with Lumosity the popular brain improvement game. Shute, who is also a gamer, determined that after 8 hours Portal 2 players scored better in some standard cognitive skill tests as compared to Lumosity players. In addition, Lumosity players never showed better improvement in any of the tests as compared to Portal 2 players. Researcher Val Shute’s results were recently published in a Popular Science report where Shute said “Portal 2 kicks Lumosity’s ass.”
Shawn Green, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies video games said “If entertainment games actually do a better job than games designed for neuroplasticity, what that suggests is that we are clearly missing something important about neuroplasticity.”
Of course we gamers already knew this, or at least Glados did. Do not under any circumstances play the sound file…..ever!
You can check out the study in this PDF.
Portal vs Lumosity by GamaKris
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