If a child plays action video games for as little as two hours per week, it is highly likely to improve his or her reading ability, found a study carried out by a team of researchers in Italy and Switzerland.
The study, which was published in ‘Nature Human Behaviour’ journal on Monday, segregated 150 Italian schoolchildren in the age group of eight to 12 into two groups.
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One group was told to play an action video game the researchers had created and the other group was asked to play a video game, which was designed to teach children how to code.
The researchers ensured that the children played the games for around two hours per week. At school, they were supervised for a period of six weeks.
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It was found that the children, who had played the action game, showed great improvement in the reading speed, reading accuracy and attention to detail. The children, who played the coding game, did not show the same.
Angela Pasqualotto, first author of the study and a PhD student at the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Trento in Italy, said, “We found a seven-fold improvement in attentional control in the children, who played the action video game compared to the other control group.”
(With inputs from agencies)
