Pupils empowered by video games

Dundee (Scotland) – Ten weeks of videogame cognitive training can lead to surprising results: mathematics and logic are no longer a difficult obstacle to overcome for elementary school children.

These are the results of a pleasant experiment told by the BBC and conducted by researchers from Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) on a class of thirty pupils aged between nine and ten from a primary school in Dundee. Fifteen minutes a day of training were enough: before the lessons the boys were subjected to play sessions based on Nintendo DS and Dr. Kawashima ‘s More Brain Training, a title that collects mnemonic, logical, perceptive and linguistic exercises.

To verify the effectiveness of the treatment, to confirm how the tight training rhythms allow a greater amount of blood to flow to the prefrontal cortex of the brain, stimulating readiness and ability in school-age children, the performance of the group subjected to the videogame care with two other groups, one exercised at the Brain Gym, physical activity aimed at developing a healthy mens, the other left without supplementary school activities, whether physical or mental.

Terrain of the challenge, a test that assessed the logical-mathematical abilities of the little ones. If the results obtained by the three groups in the pre-training test were substantially comparable, the results of the tests administered were surprising. after ten weeks of treatment . First place, the Scottish school class practiced daily with 15 minutes of gaming. The results obtained by the boys are improved by an average of ten points ; none fell below 65 percent correct answers. Dr Kawashimàs More Brain Training proved to be an excellent learning support even for a disabled child: if in the first test he had obtained a score of 25 correct answers out of 100, in the test that followed the videogame-based training he answered correctly to 68 questions.

It’s not just a question of scores: globally, the class has proven itself more responsive , reducing the time taken to complete the test by almost 5 minutes. The two control groups also significantly improved their performance, without however obtaining the results achieved by the young gamers.

Unexpectedly, SPOnG reports, Nintendo DS-based training has led to