If you have a phone and you play video games, there’s a good chance you already sneak game breaks occasionally during the work day, undoubtedly only during your regular, authorized break periods. In case it comes up, science has your back. In a study recently published in Human Factors, “Searching for Affective and Cognitive Restoration: […]
When a situation have a few possible outcomes — say, asking a friend for a favor — do you tend to assume the worst will happen? Not that they’ll be happy to help out, but that they’ll secretly resent you? That sort of negative thinking isn’t uncommon when you’re coping with anxiety, depression and other […]
Dr. Jennifer Hazel and her team at Checkpoint are researching the psychological impact of video games, and they’re looking for input from people around the world. If you play games of any sort, you can participate. Here’s why they’re studying this subject: We believe that games would be a valuable therapy for all sorts of […]
It’s no surprise that some major advances in artificial intelligence come from defense research — that’s where the money goes, with over half of America’s research and development spending focused on the military. But as a recent study on treating bipolar disorder from the University of Cincinnati demonstrates, some of that research eventually makes its […]
In recent years, machine learning has been a fun diversion for most of us, bringing joy and horror equally with things like Cooking With Cthulhu and Google Deep Dream’s obsession with dogs. But while we were busy training computers to recognize the difference between kittens and ice cream cones, researchers have been using machine learning […]
Ever try to operate on far too little sleep? Noticed how staying on task gets more challenging, or how focus becomes slippery? The dangers of sleep deprivation are well-documented, but there’s more we can learn. That’s why researchers at London, Ontario’s Western University have started the world’s largest sleep study. To make it the world’s […]
Brain training games promise big results from repeating simple tasks every day. Generally speaking, it’s not that easy: repeating a memory-boosting puzzle every day for months is very likely to improve your results on that memory-boosting puzzle, but research doesn’t show that it actually improves your memory, for example. But with a recent study published […]
A lot of us who’ve grown up with games have a knee-jerk reaction when anyone suggests violent games could increase aggression — no, of course they can’t, right? And it’s no wonder people get defensive about the subject. After all, it seems like every time a horrific act of mass violence occurs, the media digs […]
Want to know how people will act if we ever discover the world is about to end? Given an obvious lack of real world examples, you’d normally have to turn to fiction for such morbid speculation, but an international group of researchers had a better idea: study the end of a virtual world for insight […]
Virtual reality has become an exciting therapeutic tool, but that’s far from the only good its doing in the world of psychology and neurology. A new study published in Neuropsychologia shows that it’s also allowing researchers to create scenarios that would normally being impossible to study ethically. A research group from Italy’s Scuola Internazionale Superiore […]
