“Prior research by our group and others has shown that action gamers excel at many tasks. In this new study, we show they excel because they are better learners,” explained Daphne Bavelier, a research professor in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. “And they become better learners,” she said, “by playing the fast-paced action games.”

Bavelier said it comes down to our brain’s ability to decide what will come next, whether it be while driving a car, taking part in a conversation, or at work. “In order to sharpen its prediction skills, our brains constantly build models, or ‘templates,’ of the world,” she explained. “The better the template, the better the performance. And now we know playing action video game actually fosters better templates.”

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compared action video game players’ visual performance to that of non-game players using a pattern discrimination task.

Researchers found that the game-players outperformed the non-game players and were able to connect this to their brains using a better template for the task they were being asked to accomplish.

The team then performed an experiment designed to show whether or not video game players could create these templates on their own, or if it was the act of playing the games that was causing the better templates.

Non-video game players were asked to play games for 50 hours over nine weeks. One group played action games such as Call of Duty, while another group played a non-action video game like The Sims.

“When they began the perceptual learning task, action video gamers were indistinguishable from non-action gamers; they didn’t come to the task with a better template,” said Bavelier. “Instead, they developed better templates for the task, much, much faster showing an accelerated learning curve.”

Bavelier is currently looking into which characteristics in action video games are responsible for boosting a player’s ability to learn. “Games other than action video games may be able to have the same effect,” she said. “They may need to be fast paced, and require the player to divide his or her attention, and make predictions at different time scales.”