Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Hey Jake! You’re learning.
Huffington Post reports on a new study demonstrating the learning benefits of video games:
“People that play these fast-paced games have better vision, better attention and better cognition,” said Daphne Bavelier, an assistant professor in the department of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester.
That’s the meat of the article. The rest is sprinkled with tired old canards — first from the game-haters,
Gavin McKiernan, the national grassroots director for the Parents Television Council, an advocacy group concerned about sex and violence in the media, said that when it comes to violent video games, any positive effects are outweighed by the negative.
“You are not just passively watching Scarface blow away people,” McKiernan said. “You are actually participating. Doing these things over and over again is going to have an effect.”
and then from Bavelier herself, who turns out to be, um. Well, um . . .
Bavelier said games could be developed that would harness the positive effects of the first-person shooter games without the violence.
“As you know, most of us females just hate those action video games,” she said. “You don’t have to use shooting. You can use, for example, a princess which has a magic wand and whenever she touches something, it turns into a butterfly and sparkles.”
Oh, yeah, that’ll sell.
D.
