Video Games Can Improve Seniors’ Mental Skills

The University of Illinois has put out a press release about Professor Arthur Kramer’s work with video games and seniors. His findings are to be published shortly in Psychology & Aging. It seems that playing a strategic video game can improve older folk’s mental skills. The game, “Rise of Nations”, allows the player to build farms, cities, employ people, feed and house them, create an army and invade other countries. I downloaded the trial version, and had a lot of fun – I spent far too much time playing the ‘tutorial’ version, but I could have used some training from one of Dr Kramer’s expert.

Forty adults in their 60s or 70s were allocated to one of two groups. One group received 23 hours of training in Rise of Nations, the other group had no training. They were all tested before, during, and after the training period. The tests examined task-switching ability, short-term visual memory, reasoning skills, working memory, verbal recall, and spatial recognition.

The seniors from the game-playing group had improved results in several of these tests. They were significantly faster at task-switching than non-gamers. Their working memory and reasoning were also improved. The more game-training, the better was the result in these tests. There was no benefit of training on verbal recall or most of the other tests.

This seems like a good way for older folk to stay mentally fit, and maintain their cognitive abilities. But, as Dr Kramer emphasizes, video gaming shouldn’t replace other important activities – socializing, exercising, and eating a healthy diet.

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