Bill MacKenty

Games and multitasking. A good thing?

Courtesy of The Globe and Mail comes this interesting study (72 KB PDF file) about games and multitasking.

Although the sample size is quite low (N=100), the study is suggestive, and should be investigated more thoroughly.

“Prof. Bialystok suspects video gamers, like bilinguals, have a practised ability to block out information that is irrelevant to the task at hand.
“It’s like going to the gym,” she said. “You build up the ability to control impulses with practice.”

Raph Koster talks about this in his book - the brain is really good at isolating stuff; only what it wants to see.  The example he uses in his book talks about a group of people who are asked to count the number of clowns in a picture.  When asked to recollect the picture, though, the people seemed to miss the giant pink gorilla in the background!