While the contention that video games are bad for kids is slowly, stubbornly slipping from the public conscious, it seems that study at the other end of the spectrum – how video games might be good for children – is still very much in its infancy, and often met with scepticism and disdain.

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“ The video games are increasing fluency and speed of processing. They’re a scaffold upon which you can build fluency with what you already know.”

“ A video game may not have the same level of educational content as a book, but its appeal to young people is likely to hold their attention for far longer

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A recent example of this is a paper published in Current Biology earlier this year from The University of Padua, bearing the eye-catching title “Action Video Games Make Dyslexic Children Read Better.” The title is largely self-explanatory: the study claimed to show that young children aged 7-13 with dyslexia, a mental condition that can greatly hinder reading ability, could read faster after 80 minute play sessions of select minigames from Rayman Raving Rabbids. In some cases the results were equivalent to or even exceeded the effects of a whole year of traditional therapy. Such bold conclusions quickly drew headlines which, unsurprisingly, were followed by criticism from some in the field of neuroscience. I decided to investigate further.“At first glance it sounds like a crazy idea,” admits Simone Gori ,who wrote the paper along with Padua colleagues Andrea Facoetti and Sandro Franceshini. “But previous studies showed that action video games improved attention, and we believed that this could translate directly into better reading abilities. The outcome was a pleasant one.”Simone does his best to walk me through the complexity of his findings. “Our study is the first to show how action video game experiences could potentially be useful in remediating a developmental disorder [like dyslexia]. Our research proved that training attention, without any reading or language training, directly translates into better reading abilities.”Dyslexia is arguably the most prevalent neuro-developmental disorder, affecting a large percentage of the population worldwide. Despite this, there remains fierce debate in the scientific community about its exact nature. “The dominant view, despite lack of scientific evidence, is that dyslexia is exclusively a language problem,” insists Simone. “In fact, attentional deficits are proved to be a core deficit of dyslexia, while a causal link between language problems and dyslexia has yet to be found.”So, if dyslexia does stem from an attention deficiency rather than a language problem, video games, with their unrivalled (and oft-criticised) ability to sustain a child’s attention, could prove hugely beneficial in treatment of the condition. It’s with this in mind that the use of Rayman Raving Rabbids in a major scientific study begins to seem less ridiculous.Simone ensures me that the game was ideal for his purposes, allowing the division of minigames into action and non-action categories. The distinction was based on criteria such as “speed of transient events and moving objects, unpredictability, and peripheral processing.” This allowed the study to closely differentiate which elements of the game elicited positive results. Only when subjects played the games that satisfied the ‘action’ criteria was there improvement in their reading ability.Perhaps it was inevitable that such bold conclusions would attract criticism. Most prominent is Dorothy Bishop, Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at the Department of Experimental Psychology in Oxford, who declined to be interviewed for this article. On her high profile personal blog she criticised the extent of the testing, calling it “methodologically weak” due to the small sample groups. She refers to the seemingly significant results as “false positives” that wouldn’t hold up to further testing. She concludes, “If playing active computer games really does massively enhance children’s reading, we might have expected to see a dramatic improvement in reading levels in the general population in the years since such games became widely available.”“Criticisms [about the small test groups] are absolutely appropriate, but at the same time applied to most research at early stages,” responds Dr Paula Tallal, Co-director of The Centre of Molecular and Behavioural Neuroscience at Rutgers University. “The vast majority of studies that have ever been done were special populations – done with small groups of subjects. This is what science generally does: very small, controlled group studies to work out if it’s even worthwhile to test any further.”What appears to have been lost in the criticism is how the study defines ‘better’ in the context of reading ability. When it comes to reading there is a huge difference between fluency, the speed at which someone reads, and accuracy, which is the literal comprehension of language. “The article didn’t claim that they improved accuracy one bit,” says Dr Tallal. “It just improved the number of words per minute these kids could read. Action video games are not teaching children to read. These children already know what they know. The video games are increasing fluency and speed of processing. They’re a scaffold upon which you can build fluency with what you already know.”There has also been concern voiced, both by Dorothy Bishop and John Rack, head of assessment services at the charity Dyslexia Action, that misunderstanding the study’s definition of ‘better’ could lead to some parents abandoning traditional dyslexia treatment and replacing it with sessions in front of the Xbox. Simone Gori believes such fears are unfounded. “If you read all the media that we released after our study was published, caution was the key word. We never suggested quitting training to play video games instead. We wanted to open up future possibilities for dyslexia remediation.”The idea of replacing conventional therapy with video games sounds, on the surface, deeply irresponsible. Yet it isn’t unprecedented. Penelope Trunk is a mother in the US who decided to take her sons out of school so that they could educate themselves. This involves copious amounts of gaming. Her youngest son, aged seven, has dyslexia, and she claims that video games have been hugely beneficial in overcoming his reading difficulties.“We had a private tutor for my son. It was not nearly as effective as video games,” Penelope tells me. “The biggest problem with dyslexia is that it makes reading so difficult that practicing isn’t any fun. Video games are short bits of reading, sometimes just one or two word commands. And it’s fun. It incentivises him to work harder. He’d only read when the tutor told him to read. With a video game he can practice reading all day.”Although anecdotal, this certainly supports Simone Gori’s theory of attentional deficit issues as a key component of dyslexia. A video game may not have the same level of educational content as a book, but its appeal to young people is likely to hold their attention for far longer, subsequently improving their ability to concentrate on other tasks such as reading. Dr Tallal elaborates on the broader potential of video games in dyslexia treatment.So while the Italian study was limited in some respects, this shouldn’t diminish the impact of its findings. Simone and his colleagues plan to test further, focusing on pre-reading age children to determine if age appropriate games at this stage in life can reduce future dyslexia incidence.Uncertainty remains over whether other commercial action games would show the same benefits. Simone contends that “All games that have the action characteristics [found in Rayman Raving Rabbids] should provide the same beneficial results.” Dr Tallal is less certain. “I don’t know that you can generalise. I think you would have to try other games. ‘Action video games’ is a general term; not all of them are going to have the same secret sauce, as it were, of rapid processing.”It seems, then, that the only consensus opinion, one way or another, is that further study is required to truly gauge the impact that video games could have on dyslexia treatment. Certainly it’s too early for children to be abandoning traditional therapy in favour of lengthy Minecraft sessions. Yet it would also be a shame if the criticisms levelled at the study, which, as Dr Tallal is keen to stress, generally originate from personal blogs and not peer reviewed journals, were to hinder incredibly promising findings. If links between attentional deficits and dyslexia can be further established, it could position video games as a key element of treatment alongside other techniques, and help put an end to the lingering stigma attached to young people and their gaming habits.“If action video games help kids get better, then that’s an advance,” concludes Dr Tallal. “There’s more science to do, no doubt. But if the games work, let the children play them.”

David Owen is a freelance writer of all sorts of nonsense. Join him @dnjowen for bland commentary and unintelligent profanity.