Interesting discussion of research viewpoints on cognitive impact of computer games and possible implications for training where people need to spot rare and unusually variances. A short snippet offer one perspective from Duke University researchers: others in the link below.
"The Halo 3 theory comes from a simple observation made by researchers at Duke University: frequent video-game players seem to be better at picking out threats quickly.
Stephen Mitroff, a Duke professor, and Mathias Fleck, a graduate student, had been following the burgeoning research on the effect of video games on all sorts of cognitive abilities. They compared the performance of gamers with nongamers, defining gamers as people who had spent at least five hours a week for the past six months playing "first-person shooters" - video games that show a world through the player's eyes, moving through a series of threat-filled hallways and landscapes. In one test of people's ability to identify low-frequency threats, gamers had an error rate of 15 percent, compared with 25 percent for nongamers.
The reason for the advantage was unclear, though gamers have obvious experience both in scanning a screen quickly for threats and in improving their visual detection in new arenas. This work has not yet been published, but is under consideration by the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, and Fleck says it "could potentially shift hiring practices or training procedures." Rubinstein says his lab is keeping an eye on such studies, but there are no real-world tests planned."
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