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When my children, ages 11 and 8, walk in the back door after school, the first thing they always say is: “Mommy! Can we play the Prodigy? "

After a quick mental calculation of how much screen time they already have per week and how much peace and quiet I need to complete my work, I agree. After all, Prodigy is a role-playing video game that encourages kids to practice math facts. It is instructive.

Okay?

Although video games are increasingly crammed into classrooms, scientists who study them say data is lacking on whether they can actually improve learning - and most agree that teachers are still good at games in all but a few situations.

But there is growing evidence that some types of video games can improve brain function in a smaller set of tasks. This is good news for potential readers, as well as for the millions of people who like to play, or at least do not seem to stop playing (see infographic).

“There is a lot of evidence that people — not just young people — are spending too much time playing games on their screens,” says Richard Mayer, an educational psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "If we can turn that into something more productive, that would be a good thing to do."

In an article in the 2019 Annual Review of Psychology, Mayer set out to explore rigorous tests that test what people can learn from sports. Although not entirely sure about sports education skills, some studies have suggested that games can be effective in teaching second language, maths and science. Hopefully, she says, finding a way to use any brain-enhancing power to get better class results.

Your mind on sports

Some of the first evidence that mind games can be developed comes from first-person shooting games. The idea that the games were so often overlooked was initially a frustrating experience for a graduate student of psychology at Rochester University in New York. C. Shawn Green gave her friends a test of visual attention, and their points were not on the charts. She and her research manager, Daphné Bavelier, think that there must be an error in her writing code for the exam. But when Bavelier took the test, he scored points in the normal range.

The difference was that Green's friends all spent more than 10 hours a week on Team Fortress Classic, a first-person version of flag shooting. Green and Bavelier then strongly tested the idea with people who were new to the game. They had two teams training for different types of games: One team practiced a first-person shooter game for one hour a day for 10 days, and the other spent the same amount of time in Tetris, a local puzzle game.

New game players were much better at focusing on the target audience in a confusing, visually impaired environment compared to Tetris players. The team also found that actors, on average, could consistently track five moving objects in the viewing area, compared to the three non-track players.

Bavelier, now a psychiatrist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, says game players can better shift their visual attention between scattered attention (scanning a large object) and focusing attention (removing certain facts from the video). "This is called attention control, the ability to change attention sparingly as time goes on," he says.

While it is not yet clear whether developing this type of attention can help children in the classroom, Bavelier says, he sees the power of games to help motivate students - add a little "chocolate" to the learning mix.

Green, now a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, agrees that the benefits of playing for hours of Call of Duty can be limited in real life. “There are some people who have jobs that require advanced attention, such as surgeons, law enforcement, or the military,” he says. But, you notice, every game comes with the cost of chances. "If video game time is wasting time on homework, that could adversely affect reading and math skills."

In another study, researchers found that Tetris-trained gaming players were better off in two-dimensional mental states than those who played the control game. Students who played a two-hour All You Can E.T., an educational game designed to develop a high transition between tasks, improve their mind-shifting skills compared to students who have played a word search game. Not surprisingly, the skills to understand the games that can be developed are those that players end up training often during play.

But more importantly, this skill development is very clear in the work that has been done: first-person shooters' games do not improve the mental circulation of objects, and Tetris does not improve visual attention. And strangely enough, in examining his review studies, Mayer found no conclusive evidence that so-called brain training games for healthy adults such as the Lumosity suite of games are effective in improving memory, attention or spatial awareness.

The next step is to find out how these findings can be interpreted in the classroom, when video games are already making way. Many students can benefit from developing the ability to adjust their attention sparingly when needed. And while first-person shooting games are not really appropriate for high school students, Bavelier says researchers are better at identifying key features of video games that improve improved brain function.

“It could be a doctor-inspired game that has to choose the right medicine to save the world. It should not be linked to death, violence and zombies, ”he said.

"Making a compelling and effective video game is hard," said Green. Not to mention that games designed for entertainment can be as expensive as making a blockbuster movie. What could be very useful in the classroom, he says, is designing children-friendly games aimed at developing specific brain skills that will help students succeed throughout the school day.

Winning games

At New York University Learning Games, director Jan Plass' team designs a type of shooter, educational video game that develops cognitive skills in the non-violent management profession.

In All You Can E.T., players shoot food or drink into aliens' mouths based on a set of ever-changing rules, forcing their brains to switch between tasks. And Gwakkamolé is a “Whac-A-Mole” style game designed to help players improve their control by hitting only avocados who are not wearing hats.

"Both of these games enable students to practice important skills that prevent some children from fully developing at an early age," said Plass. "Changing jobs and blocking controls are very important for learning."

Blocking control keeps children in their seats, helps them focus on the lesson and prevents explosions that disrupt the entire classroom. Practicing this activity while playing a fun computer game is a challenge other methods do not have. "It is clear that the games also involve children" turned off or activated, "he said.

But Bavelier asks if the cognitive skills acquired in the game will extend to other, real-world or classroom situations. "Certainly the people who play Gwakkamolé get better at blocking, in that game," he said. "But it is a very long command to show that that ability extends to better prevention in general."

The best class video games have some features, says Mayer and Plass. They focus on one particular perception skill and force players to practice that skill with embedded feedback and reaction. The game has to be flexible, which means that the level of challenge increases as the player progresses. This is the key to the classrooms where teachers need one game that will work well for both struggling and advanced students.

Game designers want to unite students in educational games in the same way 270 million of us run to play Candy Crush every day. “The most important aspect of the sport is its motivating power,” Mayer said. "We want to use that."

To do that, Mayer says, brain scientists, academic researchers, and game designers must work together to create compelling games that can sharpen cognitive skills while having fun. Bavelier points to the brain power of children to do things like memorize large Pokémon characters and their special powers. Imagine if they used that longing to read all the stars in the night sky, said Bavelier.

While this research is still developing, I am convinced of the ever-growing requests of my screen kids - especially if they are asking to play games designed to help them learn math.

"This is exactly our dream," said Plass. "That the kids will be dying to do their homework."