5/13/2005

 

Project Shows Video Games Can Be Beneficial

By WENDI WINTERS, For The Capital
Can you list all the things your mom said were bad for you?
Chocolates, sodas and hamburgers were supposed to cause acne. rock and roll would lead to your moral decline.Playing computer games was a waste of time.Sorry mom, a 12 year old from Bay Ridge has proven you wrong again.Karl Stein, a seventh-grader at St. Martin's School in Severna Park, has successfully demonstrated that some video games, especially action and horror genre games, actually improve a subject's reaction time."Watching horror games seems to sensitize people to things going on around them and make them more alert," he said.Karl's science project, "Action Puzzle, Horror, Oh My!" disproved his mom's worries.The paintball and lacrosse-loving youngster was one of a dozen high scorers at St. Martin's middle school science fair who went on to the recent county science fair competition, where he placed first in the seventh-grade medicine and health."I'm trying to prove video games are good for you," Karl said.Now he and three other students from St. Martin's will compete in the National Middle School Science Fair in Washington, D.C., Oct.15-19, sponsored by the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge.Finalists share in $100,000 in scholarships and prizes; the top winner receives a $15,000 scholarship."If he gets selected as one of the 40 finalists," said Judi Stein, Karl's mother, "We'll match any prize money he wins."Using a series of simple physical and computer tests, Karl proved that viewers of video games reduced the amount of time it took to react to an event after sitting in front of that glowing blue screen for 15 minutes. It was a temporary, but measurable effect."I had a bit of trouble explaining that to the judges," he said. "It took a while to convince them a decrease in reaction time is a good thing."Karl's science teacher Gina Gonez noted the county Department of Health gave three awards to middle school students, all of them St. Martin's students. In addition to Karl, Robert Jaseph, Alex Schmier and Rebecca Niner will submit entries for the national competition."We start in lower school with a booklet of specific guidelines for the scientific methods they use in putting together a project," she said.Karl recruited five human guinea pigs, including his father, Michael, a computer scientist for SRI, International, to test his theory.Before beginning computer play, theirreaction time in catching a ruler in midair after it was dropped and hitting a button when it lit up were timed. They would play a game for 15 minutes and take the tests again to measure the differences in reaction times.After a short rest, they repeated the process for two more types of games.Each test subject gamely went through this complete process five times."Research shows that people playing 'Medal of Honor,' an action game, had better reaction times than those playing the puzzle game 'Tetris.' The hypothesis was that if video games of horror genre were played, it would have a greater reaction time decrease than action and puzzle-style games," Karl said."The data shows the horror game decreased the reaction time the most overall. It also decreased the reaction time more frequently than either of the two other games."Puzzlingly, Karl found the puzzle game increased the reaction time of the player. It took a person longer to react to an event after playing the game.Mrs. Stein, who teaches advanced placement economics at Broadneck High School, has mixed feelings. She's proud as punch for her son, but one senses she has a keen desire to hide the computer from him and his 9-year old sister Fiona, a third-grader at St. Martin's."Maybe when school's out I'll let him play more," she said grudgingly.Was that a smile?





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