Video Games as Treatment
When her 11-year-old son was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder last year, Janet Herlihey warmed up to an unthinkable solution for his problem: video games. What sold her on games instead of medication was NASA technology. The technology would help "tune" her child's brain to focus and relax while he played fairly innocuous, off-the-shelf games like "Ratchet and Clank" on Sony's PlayStation 2.
The system, called Smart BrainGames, essentially monitors her son's brain waves through the use of sensors in a helmet while he plays a game. A box that can be hooked up to PS2 then initiates changes in the game. The more the player concentrates, for example, the faster a car will go in a racing game.
The San Diego-based Virtual Reality Medical Center has been using games and virtual environments as a tool to treat phobias, such as the fear of flying. Others have found a niche for relaxation and meditation games, such as The Journey to Wild Divine, which uses biofeedback techniques to measure brain waves and monitor muscle tension during the game. From CNET news
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As a counter to the idea that video games are a disease, here are some alternatives. I have no information on whether these games provide an effective treatment for anything. But they do suggest a different viewpoint on games.
I am a little puzzled about the role of video games in ADD or ADHD. If children can focus their attention on a game, do they really have an attention deficit? A game would be plausible as a way to measure attention when the child is motivated. Quite apart from the elaborate (and expensive) apparatus offered by Smart BrainGames, any video game demands attention. It would be remarkable if playing video games did not improve attention.
In my blog about homework, I have been speculating about the Brain Borers. The general idea is that people attend to and remember things they see as important. If they are bored by something, it is because they don’t recognize that something as important.
So I wonder whether teachers or parents might confuse boredom with attention deficit. I don’t think I had that confusion when I was a kid. I did a lot of daydreaming in class. Since I was quiet, the teachers thought I was paying attention. Since my grades were OK, nobody was concerned. But I certainly was bored. And certainly had an attention deficit for class activities.
Fortunately, the teachers couldn’t read my mind. So they didn’t try to cure me. That was before Ritalin, of course. The cure was a paddle in those days. Maybe in the future it will be a video game.
The system, called Smart BrainGames, essentially monitors her son's brain waves through the use of sensors in a helmet while he plays a game. A box that can be hooked up to PS2 then initiates changes in the game. The more the player concentrates, for example, the faster a car will go in a racing game.
The San Diego-based Virtual Reality Medical Center has been using games and virtual environments as a tool to treat phobias, such as the fear of flying. Others have found a niche for relaxation and meditation games, such as The Journey to Wild Divine, which uses biofeedback techniques to measure brain waves and monitor muscle tension during the game. From CNET news
----------
As a counter to the idea that video games are a disease, here are some alternatives. I have no information on whether these games provide an effective treatment for anything. But they do suggest a different viewpoint on games.
I am a little puzzled about the role of video games in ADD or ADHD. If children can focus their attention on a game, do they really have an attention deficit? A game would be plausible as a way to measure attention when the child is motivated. Quite apart from the elaborate (and expensive) apparatus offered by Smart BrainGames, any video game demands attention. It would be remarkable if playing video games did not improve attention.
In my blog about homework, I have been speculating about the Brain Borers. The general idea is that people attend to and remember things they see as important. If they are bored by something, it is because they don’t recognize that something as important.
So I wonder whether teachers or parents might confuse boredom with attention deficit. I don’t think I had that confusion when I was a kid. I did a lot of daydreaming in class. Since I was quiet, the teachers thought I was paying attention. Since my grades were OK, nobody was concerned. But I certainly was bored. And certainly had an attention deficit for class activities.
Fortunately, the teachers couldn’t read my mind. So they didn’t try to cure me. That was before Ritalin, of course. The cure was a paddle in those days. Maybe in the future it will be a video game.
posted by Selby Evans at 8:25 AM
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