"We have discovered that video game players perform 10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than normal people that are non-game players," said Ray Perez, a program officer at the ONR's warfighter performance department in a Jan. 20 interview on Pentagon Web Radio's audio webcast "Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military."
"Our concern is developing training technologies and training methods to improve performance on the battlefield," said Perez, who holds a doctorate in educational psychology.
Perez described the war against terrorists as presenting significant challenges to warfighters on the ground because they must be able to adapt their operations to innovative and deadly adversaries who constantly change their tactics.
"We have to train people to be quick on their feet - agile problem solvers, agile thinkers - to be able to counteract and develop counter tactics to terrorists on the battlefield," Perez said. "It's really about human inventiveness and creativeness and being able to match wits with the enemy."
It's also about adaptability. Perez said this means "being able to work outside your present mindset, to think beyond what you have been taught, to go beyond your experience to solve problems in new and different ways."
Perez used the term "fluid intelligence" to describe the ability to change, to meet new problems and to develop new tactics and counter-tactics. Fluid intelligence, he explained, allows us to solve problems without prior knowledge or experience.
This raises the question of whether fluid intelligence is innate or can be developed and improved.
"For the last 50 years, fluid intelligence was felt to be immutable," Perez said, "meaning it couldn't be changed, no matter what kinds of experiences you have."
This, he added, is related to the idea of brain plasticity. "The presumption was that the structure of the brain and the organization of the brain are pretty much set in concrete by the time you are out of your teens," he explained.
Early indications suggest that cognitive improvements from video games can last up to two and half years, Perez said, but he admitted that so far the results have been relegated to observations and measurements in a controlled laboratory environment.
"The major question is that once you've increased these perceptual abilities and cognitive abilities, do they transfer to everyday tasks," he said, "and how long do they continue to influence the person working on these everyday tasks?"
In the meantime, the researchers are looking at ways to integrate video game technology into learning tools. Perez said that they are looking at everything from small-screen training on personal digital assistants and laptops to simulators and virtual environments.
One virtual environment, used to develop adaptability within team dynamics, looks very much like a cave.
"You walk into a cave and you're bombarded by this totally different, artificial world where there may be intelligent avatars that you interact with to perform a mission," Perez said. "These avatars will act as teammates, so you, as an individual, will have to interact with these avatars as a unit."
Perez said the ultimate goal is to blur the distinction between training and operations.
By: Brant
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1 comment:
Amazing to see this kind of cutting edge thinking in the armed forces. The science supports the idea that intensive brain training can actually increase mental ability.
A study last year on Improving Fluid Intelligence by Training Working Memory (PNAS April 2008) recorded increases in mental agility (fluid intelligence) of more than 40% after 19 days of focused brain training.
Martin
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