Action Video Games Boost Reading Skills, for Children With Dyslexia

[Serious]

Much to the chagrin of parents who think their kids should spend less time playing video games and more time studying, time spent playing action video games can actually make dyslexic children read better. In fact, 12 hours of video game play did more for reading skills than is normally achieved with a year of spontaneous reading development or demanding traditional reading treatments.

The evidence, appearing in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on February 28, follows from earlier work by the same team linking dyslexia to early problems with visual attention rather than language skills.

"Action video games enhance many aspects of visual attention, mainly improving the extraction of information from the environment," said Andrea Facoetti of the University of Padua and the Scientific Institute Medea of Bosisio Parini in Italy. "Dyslexic children learned to orient and focus their attention more efficiently to extract the relevant information of a written word more rapidly."

The findings come as further support for the notion that visual attention deficits are at the root of dyslexia, a condition that makes reading extremely difficult for one out of every ten children, Facoetti added. He emphasized that there is, as of now, no approved treatment for dyslexia that includes video games.

Facoetti's team, including Sandro Franceschini, Simone Gori, Milena Ruffino, Simona Viola, and Massimo Molteni, tested the reading, phonological, and attentional skills of two groups of children with dyslexia before and after they played action or non-action video games for nine 80-minute sessions. The action video gamers were able to read faster without losing accuracy. They also showed gains in other tests of attention.

"These results are very important in order to understand the brain mechanisms underlying dyslexia, but they don't put us in a position to recommend playing video games without any control or supervision," Facoetti said.

Still, there is great hope for early interventions that could be applied in low-resource settings. "Our study paves the way for new remediation programs, based on scientific results, that can reduce the dyslexia symptoms and even prevent dyslexia when applied to children at risk for dyslexia before they learn to read."

And, guess what? Those kids will also be having fun.

Action video games boost reading skills, study of children with dyslexia suggests

*Is dyslexic*
*played video games as a kid*
*has "somewhat" good reading skills*



*loads up NBA2K *

 

[the mechanic]

This actually might be true..my 3rd graders reading scores went up after i got him a nintendo

 

[Serious]

Lowkey I find timing of this study when, rethugs are trying to shift the blame of gun violence back to video games(see early 2000)...

 

[DStyles]

Dyslexia is a pain in the ass sometime

 

[Sensitive Blake Griffin]

never had dyslexia but I've been a really nerdy hardcore gamer all my life and I was always above reading level and I learned how to read pretty young, and I've always been a really good typist/speller and generally have an expansive use of the english language. I think they all kind of flow together. Playing shooters, typing a lot in chat, building vocabulary and reading what other people are saying, or just simply reading text in the game itself.

I don't really like reading much other than very select things so playing video games was probably a way better way to learn. All the text that I read in final fantasy games and other RPG's

 

[Mr. Somebody]

Action video games help my twitch reflex timing. Im able to reaction faster in brazillian jiujitsu practice when i play a lot of fighting games, compared to when i do not.

 

[GetInTheTruck]

this is the first video game I played in my life, consumed a lot of my time along with test drive:



Your reflexes have to be on some shyt to get far

skipped second grade because I was reading at too high a level

 

[Red Maverick II]

All the text that I read in final fantasy games and other RPG's

 

[Julius Skrrvin]

i definitely got some extra reading in a couple of the games i played.

planescape torment, baldurs gate

 

[Serious]

i definitely got some extra reading in a couple of the games i played.

planescape torment, baldurs gate

man the legend of zelda for N64, made sure I got that "work".

They made it impossible to advance through the game without reading.

 

[Brown_Pride]

never had dyslexia but I've been a really nerdy hardcore gamer all my life and I was always above reading level and I learned how to read pretty young, and I've always been a really good typist/speller and generally have an expansive use of the english language. I think they all kind of flow together. Playing shooters, typing a lot in chat, building vocabulary and reading what other people are saying, or just simply reading text in the game itself.

I don't really like reading much other than very select things so playing video games was probably a way better way to learn. All the text that I read in final fantasy games and other RPG's

I owe all my love for reading to rpgs. Started with new dragon warrior hit it real hard with the snes with lufia rise of the sinestral and then read book one of lord of the rings and that was all it took to get me reading daily.

A lot of those games had good logic puzzles too. And in my time there was no Internet to google shyt you either figured it out or you were fuked kids got it easy now...

Get off my yard !!!!

 

[Sensitive Blake Griffin]

I owe all my love for reading to rpgs. Started with new dragon warrior hit it real hard with the snes with lufia rise of the sinestral and then read book one of lord of the rings and that was all it took to get me reading daily.

A lot of those games had good logic puzzles too. And in my time there was no Internet to google shyt you either figured it out or you were fuked kids got it easy now...

Get off my yard !!!!

breh, trying to figure out the water temple on zelda

 

[Brown_Pride]

breh, trying to figure out the water temple on zelda

yeah i remember some of that shyt till this day. What frustrated me to no end when i first started playing was on the NES, the original final fantasy. I worked my way all the way to the end of the game, had my mom accidently bump the side of the NES and it reset. I remember it like it was yesterday I dove to hit the reset button to try to "catch" the light. Alas I was to late and my saved game was gone forever....30-40 plus hours of gaming as a 10 year old down the drain. It wasn't until I was in college and was able to play using an emulator that i beat that game....

See what I mean kids have it made with there cloud saving and memory sticks. Back in my day we used to have to play games outside in the snow...uphill.

 

[Sensitive Blake Griffin]

yeah i remember some of that shyt till this day. What frustrated me to no end when i first started playing was on the NES, the original final fantasy. I worked my way all the way to the end of the game, had my mom accidently bump the side of the NES and it reset. I remember it like it was yesterday I dove to hit the reset button to try to "catch" the light. Alas I was to late and my saved game was gone forever....30-40 plus hours of gaming as a 10 year old down the drain. It wasn't until I was in college and was able to play using an emulator that i beat that game....

See what I mean kids have it made with there cloud saving and memory sticks. Back in my day we used to have to play games outside in the snow...uphill.

I had to restart FF7 like 4 times because my memory kept getting corrupted

 

[Brown_Pride]

I had to restart FF7 like 4 times because my memory kept getting corrupted

AHHHH i hated that game for that reason. I think i can remember all the dialog till you get out that damn city verbatum with how many times I had to do that shyt.