Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan published a remarkable study where gamers were seen to read faster and more efficiently than their non-gamer counterparts. Suggesting that video games can be optimized to promote healthier habits.
Gaming and Reading: The Unexpected Benefit
Recent research is often negatively perceived as a lazy activity; recent research suggests that despite popular opinion, playing video games could have an unexpected benefit on improving a person's reading abilities. Researchers say that gaming may improve a person's peripheral attention skills, a vital ability in reading.
According to recent data gathered in 2020 by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, roughly 23 million Canadians are categorized as gamers - or people that regularly enjoy video games- with the number of hours spent on gaming per weak significantly increasing since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shaylyn Kress, the study's lead author, says that attention is a vital aspect of successful reding. A person's eyes scan across a page systematically to correctly process the words in sentences. Hence, activities that impact attention processes, like video games, may impact reading.
In a recent study, researchers from USask set out to further understand the effects of gaming on reading skills. Firstly, the team analyzed the most popular and sought-after video games to determine the number of objects at the player's periphery versus in the middle, that players reacted to.
Next, a group of participants with varying gaming experiences completed various reading tasks involving flashing words on a screen in one of eight possible locations. Words included well-known words that are familiar and easy to read, as well as fake words that required "sounding out" to be read.
The experiment showed that participants who played video games with more peripheral objects were faster and more efficient when reading both the real and fake words, reports The Star Phoenix.
Kress explains that the team observed that participants with more exposure to peripherally-presented visual demands in games- such as text notifications and enemies appearing on the side of the screen- tended to have significantly faster-reading reaction times than their lesser experienced counterparts.
Future of Gaming and Reading Research
Researchers hope that their findings will be a stepping stone to game development that promotes healthier habits.
Kress adds that both the economy and health sector benefits from their recent research since it can lead to collaborations between clinicians, scientists, and game developers to create educational games that are made to improve a person's reading ability, according to DailyMail. The demand is even more acute with the impending arrival of the metaverse.
With more and more studies coming out regarding the many unexpected benefits of video games on people's overall health, many gamers are hopeful that it will ease the demonization of the popular pastime. Nevertheless, more research is needed to verify the claims of the recent study; Kress says that her Ph.D. will focus more on further exploring the role of peripheral visual demands on people's reading performance. This will involve MRI scans of participants during various visually demanding activities in order to understand which brain regions are involved in the process.
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