Kids! You get back in front of that Xbox right now Positive news for gamers, and their parents. Hours in front of the glowing box hammering zombies as a youngster can make you more creative. A test of 491 12-year-olds found that the more they played video games, they more creative they were. The research by Linda A Jackson, a Professor of Psychology at Michigan State …
Is 491 (or 419) a statistically significant sample in this context? I am far too old a fogey to be able to cope with such things but my anecdotal experience of the kids of friends shows that it doesn't seem to rot the grey cells too much.
It would be good to get a spread of studies and I suspect larger samples to really show the benefits or not of killing Zog or whoever multiple times.
It is already Well Known by those who actually Think Of The Children that video games, especially violent ones, encourage violent and murderous behaviour, and probably lead to drug use and premarital sex.
Why on earth do we want the next generation of spree killers to be *more creative*?
Won't anyone think of the boring, uncreative yet non-murderous children?
I've been playing games since the atari 2600 (i think), I even made games for the amstrad cpc464 with colour screen(green, It's a colour). Now i write monthly newsletters as well as look after various machines, I also write a monthly parody of my local newsletters, although I would get fired if my various boss type people knew what I was doing, luckily I know how to cover my tracks.
Raise a glass of the frothy stuff for games!
Bugger off and come back when you've polled a few thousand plus their parents and teachers.
I'm sure it does help but like all things in life moderation is the key. VGs mixed with other interests, like books, movies and parental attention will give kid's lots of things to trigger their creativity, one thing alone will not.
Creativity is a nice attribute but how about logic, analytical thinking, disciplioned. The 60's was full of creative types, they were known collectively as 'hippies'. They painted VW camper vans in house paint, took mind altering drugs, shagged their way around and were critical of anything the 'conventional' world was doing. Creativity is great but it needs a few other attributes to be socially or communally beneficial.
Now where is a that DOS boot disk with DOOM installed...?
I'm really impressed with this piece of research. Not with the subject, or even the results, particularly. With the fact that reseach looking into effects of something on something else not only understands that correlation != causality, but is actually planning more experiments to find out what the causality is. In my experience, this is entirely unique in social research, at least the kind that is reported on in mass media.
It's rare in *press releases*, because the Marketing & Communications department typically wants to avoid the rhetorical dampening effect of "more work is needed" when announcing the results of research. But the actual researchers - particularly at a Research I institution like MSU - will almost always note methodological limitations (including the obvious ones like correlation/causality) and directions for further work.
er... Maybe its that creative people are attracted to Gaming - that it stimulates their imagination and allows them to role play in an effective way.. People with poor imaginations, or who arent creative dont tend to like games.
Therefore I dont think gaming makes you creative - its creative people who game play.
Saying its the other way around, is like saying a going into a male toilet turns you into a man - rather than the more obvious - that you have to BE a man first, before you are able to go in. Simples.
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