14 DAY TRIAL // Doctor Lorenza Colzato of the Leiden University in The Netherlands says that playing first-person shooters can improve short-term memory capacity for gamers and increase their ability to register important information quickly.
The research has seen two groups, one made up of gamers and another of people who do not share the hobby, complete tasks that taxed their memory.
The full study from Doctor Lorenza Colzato has been published in the most recent issue of the journal Psychological Research.
The bottom line is that first-person shooters “require players to develop a flexible mindset to rapidly react and monitor fast moving visual and auditory stimuli.”
It’s unclear whether playing video games might also have an effect on the long-term memory of players.
Shooters have also been previously linked with improvements in reaction time and even eye-hand coordination.