RamoTude

Yeah, I actually think about this if I ever have kids.

1. I agree: video games have lots of benefits. I think there's an societal inertia on understanding the power of the interactivity, responsiveness, and complexity that games can provide that virtually little else can -- especially for a kid.
   1. There are dynamic concepts that many adults don't realize kids can intuitively (and then explicitly) grasp. Think of the civics concepts (zoning, population densities, sunk cost vs increased social capabilities, etc) you get exposed to in SimCity. Think of the economic/environment resource concepts you intuit from strategy games (resource acquisition vs investment, technological progress, conquest vs defense). The value of these being learned intuitively allows them to serve as metaphors in other domains unrelated to gaming.
   2. I was insanely bored as a kid and complex strategy games really gave something for my mind to tackle. On the other hand, I'm super grateful for my ability to sit and read (or work on something) -- that has probably contributed long-term to my quality of life more than anything.
   3. The problem with certain games or habits of gaming is that it can reinforce a bad reward cycle. I think learning delayed gratification (psychologists love referring to the marshmallow test) is important. However, to some extent, psych research simplifies because I think its more about relative choices than raw willpower. My plan was always to let my kids play the best games out there but limit their time on them. For me, if I was a kid, stuck between playing a strategy game or some boring history homework -- its not much of a choice.
2. Re: digital vs non-digital. I think lots of researchers look for differences in this stuff. We could probably generate a bunch of theories about how kinesthetic touch or handling 3D objects is important vs how learning abstract, and arguably, more relevant and modern tools is important. Variety is ultimately valuable; so is gravitating towards natural talents and inclinations.

Thanks for the questions

Yeah, thats rough. My best guess is to find other things to engage. (Jobs, hands on work with a project or hobby, community work, some kind of independent creative project). I understand his anger because he knows he has at least one thing he likes, and its being arbitrarily taken away from him.

As a former angry student myself (at that age), I didn't like many things. The social world at that point wasn't great for me, school was painfully boring (but I wasn't doing that well at it), I was taking high school math, too. So other options kind of sucked for me.

I know COVID probably means no sports, but I would consider other activities like the ones above. Maybe programming -- I started learning at 15. I would also suggest that giving him better awareness of how much time is okay and sticking with that might seem more equitable and less arbitrary.

Re: Mightier. I haven't read any research studies on them. Its an interesting concept.

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Re: 'change back'. The short answer is yeah, stopping most cognitive training, as well as drugs and physical training programs, shows regression back towards baseline over time. But this can happen on the order of months or even years (with training, not drugs). Another issue with really longitudinal follow-ups is that any population you study will just, statistically, show decline over time as a result of aging.

I think a lot of the benefit in many training programs is in the initial exposure, if you've never had exposure to that concept or lesson before. Think about the impact of the first 10 lessons in something (piano, archery, new genre of video game, compound weight lifts). You end up retaining some shreds of it even years later. You get worse at playing as soon as you stop -- and the longer you trained, the more shreds you'll probably retain years later. But there's always an issue of are you training just to train? And how much is the training helping your life?

So if you were really underexposed to a concept (like proper posture for lifting), that can stick with you forever once you were made aware of it. Likewise, I think sometimes these training programs are more like 'one-off' lessons that you might have to repeat more than just once to get it.

In the case of emotional management, you might have to be made aware of your reactions with bio-feedback potentially or people close to you. Then you have to practice catching those emotions and managing them over time. But if you 'stopped training', your brain is aware of the concept now so you haven't lost everything.

[1] Yeah, I read his Strategies, and the Power books a long time ago, but don't think I've read Mastery.

Intelligence typing is a bit of a urban myth. On one hand, we have fairly dedicated areas of the brain processing visual information, that is distinct from auditory, kinesthetic, etc -- but when people say 'intelligence', they mean a wide range of things that go far beyond sensory processing.

In general, any sort of psychometric classification of intelligence types have been difficult. Intelligence itself is already an abstract construct trying to generalize a bunch of different cognitive skills, with a modest degree of psychological validation. But I haven't seen any successful attempts to generalize intelligence further, or re-break it back down into different abstracted constructs. Interestingly, some of the creativity tests we have now borne out of an attempt to get a more broad definition of intelligence.

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In general, yeah, there are definitely individual differences on the ability to process different kinds of sensory information, our ability to imagine these different type of sensations, and the type of metaphors we use when we think or imagine (whether they be spatial/visual, temporal patterns, etc).

Hi Draxyr,

I love this question.

I used to watch the Starcraft [1] scene and I remember thinking how brutally players dropped off in their twenties. Partly because of the Korean dominance and their requirement for military service around their early twenties but there was definitely a cognitive or motor-action ability cause for it.

I initially wanted to take pro-players in my grad school project and scan them in fMRI while doing reaction time tasks but no one else was up for that at my school. #1 Department of Neurology in the world, but a little conservative.

I personally collected age-related data on different cognitive abilities ranging from 10 to 80+ year olds. I literally have an answer for you regarding multitasking ability (which my thesis focused on): 24 years old was the average peak ability.

Multitasking is a more complex skill than raw reaction time (which peaks even earlier). There are easily even more complex skills than multitasking/task-switching which could peak later.

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For League and your coaching:

1) There are other skills that are involved in League (I stopped playing probably 6 years ago -- started ARAMing recently though). Those skills have different age peaks that are less characterized by research. 2) We're only looking at correlations/big data so individual differences can always mean a lot with coaching.

I think its interesting that peak physical strength supposedly caps at 25 years old, but training, experience, and other factors are probably what's responsible for the heavyweight division in the UFC being dominated by late 30-year olds.

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I would say, the more strategically complex the game is, the better longevity for players. So, for instance, Starcraft 2 is perceived as a dominantly strategic game by spectators but, really, its just a brutal multitasking cognitive task. This is apparent if you watch pros or if you followed the DeepMind AI project at all. Historically, we know this is true because the greatest generals in history managed to outwit at older ages.

I would also say League is extra good for longevity because it has a social cohesion/coordination aspect. I will end this post because its getting long but this is another interesting area.