Games Improve Kids’ Reasoning and Processing Abilities

A UC Berkley neuroscientist has undertaken research into whether playing a mixture of traditional games along with videogames can help kids advance their fundamental cognitive skills.

Dr. Silvia Bunge operates the Bunge Lab at Berkely and took her team to an Oakland elementary school with historically low test scores in order to begin her research. Second, third and fourth graders were invited to stay after school to play games, which included the card game SET, puzzle games Rush Hour and Quirkle and the Nintendo DS titles Picross and Big Brain Academy. The specific games listed were chosen for their ability to exercise children’s reasoning abilities.

The kids met twice a week for 75 minutes and swapped tables every 15 minutes in order to experience all the games, reports Newsweek. After eight weeks, the children’s intelligence was found to have risen 13 points. By comparison, a 12-point gain in IQ is average for an entire year of schooling.

The researchers also wanted to see if they could target kids’ processing speed as well, so another group of children were exposed to the card game Spoons and Speed, the board games Blink and Perfection and the videogame Brickbuster. Following an eight-week period, the children in this group saw their processing speed rise 27%.

Contrasting typical education intervention results, the two types of training detailed above assisted needy children the most.

Bunge is seeking more Northern Californian schools to participate in the study.