If you’re reading this article then you are probably one of the many lucky people in the world who plays video games. It seems us gamers pick up information quicker for visual decision making, but also lose information as quickly as those who do not game.

“Gamers see the world differently,” says Greg Appelbaum, an assistant professor of psychiatry in the Duke School of Medicine. “They are able to extract more information from a visual scene.”

This was revealed through research carried out by researchers at Duke University. The Research topic was “Action video game playing is associated with improved visual sensitivity, but not alterations in visual sensory memory.”

Games and non-gamers alike were asked to run through a visual sensory memory task that flashed a circular arrangement of eight letters for just one-tenth of a second. After a delay ranging from 13 milliseconds to 2.5 seconds, an arrow appeared, pointing to one spot on the circle where a letter had been. Participants were asked to identify which letter had been in that spot. Those who played intensive action games outperformed the non-gamers.

What this says is that are able to react and take in things at a quicker rate than those who don’t play any. All those hours of sitting down and playing Call of Duty, Halo or other similar games have actually had some positive effects for the gamers. Not only does gaming help with hand-eye co-ordination, but also visual decision making.

Let us know what you think of this research study, it is some pretty interesting stuff to know that games are giving us super-awesome eye control. If you want to check out the research paper relating to this study, you can do so here.