To paraphrase the common sentiment of fearful parents and eager politicians: media melts your mind. However, a new study from Science Magazine pinpoints a more realistic concern, what role do games, TV and other media play in the development of cognitive skills?
Authored by Patricia Greenfield, a researcher at UCLA, the study begins with the topic of “informal education.” This process involves using basic language and social skills outside a formal institution to teach oneself new abilities and information.
Any regular Internet users will recognize sites like Wikipedia, YouTube and StumbleUpon as quintessential centers of informal learning, but educational DVDs and TV programs also fall into this understanding.
With the time spent between formal and informal education quickly equalizing among youths, people are becoming proficient in processing and incorporating visual media. The richness of the visual environment will undoubtedly shift the developmental experience.
Greenfield notes the shift is not intrinsically good or bad, but will require an adjustment in society that is congruent with new skills. For instance, although verbal IQ test scores (which emphasize basic vocabulary) are on the rise, verbal SAT scores (which emphasize a complex vocabulary) have dropped.
Greenfield describes the Flynn effect, named after James R. Flynn, which proposes an increase in the average IQ test scores over generations. To illustrate, tests of visual reasoning skills from the 1940s onward show scores dramatically lower than those on the same tests performed in recent years.
The more dated results suggest an age-correlated reduction in visual performance, which has largely vanished in today’s climate.
With the trend replicated across cultures, a notion has appeared that the immersion in visual media has enhanced visual reasoning. Also, the complexity of mediums, such as gaming, has contributed to better student multitasking.
However, new strengths invite new weaknesses. Multitasking, while potentially useful, can strain limited attentional resources, to the point that people struggle with internalizing central material.
Greenfield’s study offers a few examples: one in which students who remembered main news stories on CNN more poorly when given a headline crawl; and another of students who, when allowed to use a laptop in class to look up information, performed worse on a quiz than those without laptops.
Related studies have found that students with high visual appetites show better recall of information, but those who spend less time in front of the TV generally offer more reflective analysis in their work. Although many programs today focus on quick-moving, high-stimulation scenes (sex, drama, murder, etc.), it is not entirely clear if the type of programming watched would alter the aforementioned findings.
“The preceding makes it clear that no one medium can do everything,” Greenfield writes. “Every medium has its strengths and weaknesses; every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.”
On this assertion, Greenfield recommends a balanced approach to visual content and informal education. Schools, she says, should continue to place textual works at the center of the learning process, while offering more visual-recall opportunities for testing purposes, to accommodate a visually charged student population.
