 
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on September 14, 2010Â
Is it hard for you to make decisions? Perhaps you should play video games. A new study reveals the training helps people to make the right decisions faster.
Cognitive scientists from the University of Rochester found that video game players develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them.
Critically, this benefit doesn’t just make them better at playing video games, but improves a wide variety of general skills that can help with everyday activities like multitasking, driving, reading small print, keeping track of friends in a crowd, and navigating around town.
In an upcoming study in the journal Current Biology, authors Daphne Bavelier, Alexandre Pouget, and C. Shawn Green report that video games could provide a potent training regimen for speeding up reactions in many types of real-life situations.
Video games have grown in popularity to the point where 68 percent of American households have members that play them, according to a 2009 report by the Entertainment Software Association.
The researchers tested dozens of 18- to 25-year-olds who were not ordinarily video game players. They split the subjects into two groups. One group played 50 hours of the fast-paced action video games “Call of Duty 2″ and “Unreal Tournament,†and the other group played 50 hours of the slow-moving strategy game “The Sims 2.â€
After this training period, all of the subjects were asked to make quick decisions in several tasks designed by the researchers.
Read in Full:Â http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/09/14/video-games-help-improve-decision-making/18122.html
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