Since video games were invented, some people considered them to be a waste of time, associated them with laziness and claimed they would rot children’s brains.

A new study suggests otherwise.

The study, headed by Daphne Bavelier, associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Rochester, shows playing action video games can improve the mind’s ability to track objects and process fast-changing visual information.

The study will be published in Nature in the near future.

“When you are testing for reaction time and coordination, [playing video games] is a positive experience for adults,” said Ann Smiley-Oyen, assistant professor of health and human performance.

She said she thought the study was interesting and has thought about how using video games could help improve overall motor skills in the elderly.

ISU students said they agreed with the findings of the study.

Melissa Elstad, sophomore in electrical engineering, is an avid player of video games. She said she supports the findings of the research.

“It is a good thing to play video games because it helps with hand-eye coordination,” Elstad said.

Chareunsavan Thammavongsa, sophomore in computer engineering, was familiar with the study and agreed with the results of the study.

“I can see how it can help you in spatial representation,” Thammavongsa said.

The study used undergraduate men, ages 18 to 23, from the University of Rochester. A control group was tested by playing the game Tetris and a variable group was assigned to play Metal of Honor, an action war-time game.

According to the study, “Video Games Modify Visual Attention, Nature,” the control group played Tetris to show playing video games leads to better hand-eye coordination. In Tetris, the user rotates and moves objects on the screen. The action video game required the user to focus on the screen for new objects that may appear at any time, like enemies or invaders.

Tetris was used because it requires heavy use of hand-eye coordination, but requires little in the way of focusing skills, according to the study.

Participants were required to play the video game in the lab for one hour every day for ten days. The test involved pointing out the location of a briefly presented target among similar distracting shapes.

Another test was to identify a white letter within a word with the rest of the letters being printed in black. The participants that played the action game tested better than the group that played Tetris.

The positive results diminished substantially after a month during a follow-up testing. Tests performed two months after the initial test revealed slightly above normal results.

Researchers used male students in the first study because only one female on the University of Rochester campus qualified for the research.

Even though Bavelier was surprised at the improvement shown in the test, she said she still stresses that video games are not a substitute for other learning activities.