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Video games help focus on fine detail From: The Australian February 13, 2007 12:00AM Increase Text Size Decrease Text Size Print Email Share Add to Digg Add to del.icio.us Add to Facebook Add to Kwoff Add to Myspace Add to Newsvine What are these? PLAYING video games that involve high levels of visual action on a daily basis can improve your ability to see fine detail, a study shows. Researchers at the University of Rochester in the US have found that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month sharpened their ability to identify letters by about 20 per cent. "Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information," says Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the university. "After just 30 hours, players showed a substantial increase in the spatial resolution of their vision, meaning they could see figures like those on an eye chart more clearly, even when other symbols crowded in."

PLAYING video games that involve high levels of visual action on a daily basis can improve your ability to see fine detail, a study shows. Researchers at the University of Rochester in the US have found that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month sharpened their ability to identify letters by about 20 per cent. "Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information," says Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the university.

These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it," she says. "That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life."

Musicians achieve a higher grade point average (GPA) than non-musicians in the same school do. Music students achieve higher ACT scores and other college entrance exam scores. In a recent study, 66% of music majors who apply to medical school are accepted, the highest percentage of any group. Only 44% of biochemistry majors are admitted. Findings indicate that music study uniquely enhances higher brain functions required for reading, mathematics, chess, science and engineering.

Music training enhances reading skills.  A study done with 1st grade children shows significantly higher reading scores with children receiving piano/music instruction than did the control group. (Hurwitz, I., Wolff, P.H., Bortnick, B.D. & Kokas, K. 1975) Music training dramatically enhances children’s abstract reasoning skills necessary for math and science.  A study with 3 and 4 year-olds indicated that children who received piano/keyboard training performed 34% higher on tests measuring spatial-temporal ability than the non-musical group. These findings indicate that music uniquely enhances higher brain functions required for mathematics, chess, science and engineering. (Psychologist Dr. Frances Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and physicist Dr. Gordon Shaw of the University of California at Irvine in 1994)

Music training increases intelligence.  Scores on a puzzle task, designed to measure spatial reasoning ability, increased significantly during the period they (three and four-year-olds) received the music lessons. In a research report, ‘Music Increases Intelligence Report,’ Dr Shaw said the piano was the instrument of choice because its keyboard gave the children both a linear and audible representation of the relationship between sounds. "What this means for parents is that they should consider giving their children piano lessons as early as age three or four," said Shaw. (College of Computing, Georgia Tech, August 24, 1994. UCI Journal, Spring 1997) Music enhances learning and creativity.  In another research test involving four and five-year olds, the effects of music on learning and creativity was measured. After twenty days of training, the music/dance group showed the greatest improvement in learning about body parts and creativity. (Mohanty, B. & Hejmadi, A. (1992). Effects Of Intervention Training on Some Cognitive Abilities of Preschool Children. Psychological Studies, 37, 31-37.)

The Workplace Doctors site details both sides of the question. In one study, University of Illinois researchers found that listening to music in "all types of work" increased work output 6.3% over a control group. In another study (dissected at MetaFilter), 56 employees working on basic computer tasks were found to be more productive when there was no music playing over the same period tested with music.

The most often cited study into the question of music's effect on the mind involves the so-called Mozart effect, which suggests that listening to certain kinds of music—Amadeus Wolfgang's classical works, in particular—impacts and boosts one's spatial-temporal reasoning, or the ability to think out long-term, more abstract solutions to logical problems that arise.

Why? Well, altruism, they note, is a component of human social behavior.  But it carries a personal cost. You give that last piece of pie to someone else and that means it doesn’t go to you. Human beings, therefore, might be tuned to constantly gauge how they’re morally measuring up, and not lay on the niceness any thicker than it needs to be.

dhood to respect and trust authority figures (such as scientists in lab coats

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the fundamental task of adolescence is 'ego identity' or 'self-definition.'" (1969, p73) This does not suggest that a child entering adolescence has no concept of self, but it becomes the critical need of the teenager.

three stages of adolescent development: Early adolescence (ages 12 to 14), Mid-adolescence (ages 15 to 16), and Late adolescence (ages 17 to 21)." (1987, p20)

The brain is bombarded with questions about what to do about all of these feelings so new and so demanding

And while the researchers found a strong relationship between video games and lower grade point averages, playing video games did not appear to affect math skills and had a positive relationship with visual-spatial skills. These skills – in which a child learns visually, by thinking in pictures and images – are considered the “training wheels” for performance in science, technology, engineering and math.

We know that music can alter your mood

. Films have been using musical scores for years to create the right mood for a scene. At times you hardly notice the music at all but you are very receptive to the mood being conveyed. So can we use music to put us in a "productive" mood?

Research seems to support such a claim. For example, a trial where 75 out of 256 workers at a large retail company were issued with personal stereos to wear at work for four weeks showed a 10% increase in productivity for the headphone wearers. Other similar research conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found a 6.3% increase when compared with the no music control group.

five major birth order positions: only, oldest, second, middle, and youngest child

. Each one of these had its own personality traits, ingrained psychological issues, and effects later in life.

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