Videogames increase school performance

It is a development of the Laboratory for Integrative Neuroscience of the University of Buenos Aires and the CONICET who tried to apply the knowledge produced by cognitive neuroscience to improve education.

The result was “Mate Marote”, a free, open source game that was scientifically tested in children at risk who can not attend to class regularly.

"We developed three games that stimulate functions such as working memory, planning and executive control, the basic building blocks of cognition" says neuroscientist Andrea Goldín, project responsible and awarded by MIT Technology Review among the 10 innovators of Argentina and Uruguay under 35 years old.

The researcher pointed out that the brain is ready to learn the difficulty; therefore, not just any little game will work, but one that demands a cognitive effort (reason, recall information, solve problems, control and regulate emotions and behaviors and engage in complex symbolic activities).

To create it, the team left the laboratory and conducted a study among 111 first-grade boys into two double-shift schools of the City of Buenos Aires in which attends child population who lives in Shantytowns nearby.

"For 10 weeks, we went on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, because learning when dispersed is more effective - points Goldín. We divided the children into two groups: one played Mate Marote and the other, for control, three less demanding games. The assistants and teachers were "blind" to the experiment ".

Before and after completing an average of 25 sessions per child (with a maximum of nine dedicated to each game), the scientists found that the trained group improved attention and cognitive flexibility, and also reaction times.

"85 percent of the workload in the first degree corresponds to language and mathematics says Goldín and generally there is a correlation between marks and attendance. We saw that with this training, the ones who attended a few times got the same notes that the ones who attended lot. The boys in the control group were got much worse notes. "

Sources:

http://www.technologyreview.es/

http://www.educ.ar/"