Another Study Shows That Action/Violent Video Games Improve Vision

from the and-yet... dept

Nearly six years ago, we wrote about a study showing that playing video games can help improve your vision, and now there’s another study showing that such video games can help improve vision — specifically contrast sensitivity, which is noted to be “important in situations such as driving at night, or in conditions of poor visibility.” But, of course, rather than paying attention to all that, we get stories about how all violent video games must be banned.

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Comments on “Another Study Shows That Action/Violent Video Games Improve Vision”

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9 Comments
Lutomes (profile) says:

Not quite so good

All the study actually shows is that “Dark” video games improve contrast perception. It just happens to be that most violent video games are also dark.

The sims or tetris are full of bright colours. But if someone mods the sims into a bright colourful murder simulator it’s not going to help improve vision all of a sudden because its violent.

Anonymous Coward says:

From the how-carefully-do-you-read-dept.

Reading the article carefully, you note that it says:

“This is a small study, showing a small effect, but it was carefully done, and merits further investigation.”

I was listening to the radio this morning where they interviewed a scientist over the meaning of the improvement (after the radio used the intro line “Video game playing improves eyesight”). After providing a brief summary of the study, the scientist pointed out that the improvement was “very small.”

I believe the article speaks for itself. Yes, there was a SMALL effect that merits further investigation, but it is a little early to hold a ticker tape parade for the improvements in vision from playing video games.

LesTat says:

As a dad

I think as a parent, I’d rather have my child be addicted to games which I have the control over with rather than my kid be involved in drugs. I have the power to monitor my kid’s computer usage compared to him using drugs behind my back. I have read an article: http://www.articletechie.com/WOW-GOLD-SAVES-THE-DAY-How-RMT-helped-a-Starving-Student/a8982_1 wherein it was discussed a game helped a student in his financial crisis in real life and it somewhat gave me a new outlook in games.

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