We already know that many people believe that competitive gamers are athletes, but now there’s scientific proof that confirms hardcore gamers have skills that non-gamers just don’t have.
A study published in the June issue of Attention, Perception and Psychophysics found that gamers have improved visual skills, including the ability to see and use visual information faster than people who reported low amounts of experience with video games.
According to Wired, test subjects focused on a screen where a circle of letters briefly popped up, but was then replaced by an arrow. Participants were then asked what letter was in the location the arrow was pointing. Gamers outperformed non-gamers no matter how long the letters were on the screen. The time ranged from 13 milliseconds to 2.5 seconds.
The study also found that even though gamers could identify information faster, there was no difference in how both groups retained the information. This means that playing video games enhances your visual identification skills (and the ability to make decisions from that information) but does not improve your memory.
Tell that to all the gamers that still have the Konami Code memorized from 1986.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-013-0472-7
