Playing digital puzzle games could be good for memory, according to a new study

Amongst the mind-boggling myriad of digital video games available to download or purchase, you may find the occasional puzzle game specifically designed to challenge the human brain.

For me, it was always the brain teaser games on my Nintendo DS, or, more commonly, the wonderful Professor Layton gaming series, which deftly and creatively mixed puzzle solving with solving a mystery.

But aside from effectively killing an hour or two and giving your mind a stimulating workout, do digital puzzle games harbour any other positives?

Well, according to researchers at the University of York, they certainly do!

In a new study conducted by the University, the researchers ultimately found that older adults who play digital video games have the same memory abilities as people in their 20s.

The study found that adults aged 60 and over who play digital puzzle games had a greater ability to ignore unnecessary distractions, much like people in their 20s who also play digital video games, including action, adventure, RPG and puzzle games.

One interesting observation that the researchers also made was that older adults who played strategy games did not show the same improvements in memory or concentration.

It is a well-known fact that during the ageing process, our mental abilities tend to decrease, particularly with our working memories, which allow us to remember a number of things at the same time. Incidentally, our working memory is thought to peak between the ages of 20 and 30.

Due to previous research showing the changing ways that the brain holds information as we get older, the York team examined whether or not gaming had altered effects depending on age.

"A lot of research has focused on action games, as it is thought that reacting quickly, keeping track of targets and so on helps attention and memory.

"But our new analysis shows that the action elements do not seem to offer significant benefits to younger adults."

Dr Fiona McNab, from the University of York's Department of Psychology.

Dr McNab further elaborated on these points in her notes, stating that the strategy elements of games (i.e. planning and problem-solving) seem to stimulate better memory and attention in young people, with the action elements achieving the opposite effect.

The study included older and younger adults playing digital games that they would normally play in their everyday lives.

Evidently, this resulted in a wide range of games being tested alongside a digital experiment that required participants to memorise various images, whilst simultaneously being distracted.

Dr Joe Cutting from the University's Department of Computer Science commented: "Generally people have a good ability to ignore irrelevant distractions – something we call 'encoding distraction."

"Puzzle games for older people had this surprising ability to support mental capabilities to the extent that memory and concentration levels were the same as a 20-year-old's who had not played puzzle games," he continued.

Towards the end of the project, researchers found that older people were more likely to forget elements committed to memory whilst being distracted if they only played strategy games.

Additionally, young people were less successful at focusing their attention if they only played puzzle games.

The researchers state that, for future studies, they could potentially focus on why there is a difference between the impacts of types of games depending on the age of the player, and if this is connected to how the ageing brain stores information.