Are the skill sets developed by gaming beneficial to students with literacy differences? We take a look at some new research that suggests that the skills developed playing video games and dyslexia might be a connection we need to explore.
The accessibility debate surrounding video games is almost as old as video games themselves. From SNES games featuring walls of scrolling text to modern releases fast-moving hit text and interfaces, it’s easy to see why people with literacy difficulties and dyslexia might feel excluded from some kinds of gaming.
However, researchers at the University of Padua recently conducted a study that indicated video games actually help increase children’s reading speed. The research found that 10 children with dyslexia who played action video games actually improved the speed at which they can proceed through a text. Interestingly, the research also discovered that the children exceeded the expected yearly improvement for a child with dyslexia.
The Padua study seems to indicate that video games can be beneficial to children with literacy difficulties and dyslexia. Video games require gamers to constantly redirect their visual attention. The study believes that specific brain circuits are stimulated via the constant need to switch targets when gaming. Simone Gori, one of the neuroscientists at the centre of the study, believes that this combats the way that letters appear jumbled on the page.
And with video games evolving in ways that further benefit people with dyslexia, it’s an exciting prospect to consider.
The rising popularity of voice-acted games is also important. Video games for classic consoles usually relied on onscreen text to advance their story, however, the rise of character-driven games has led to some vast accessibility improvements. Voice-acted games where players experience audio, as well as text, mean that many gamers with dyslexia are improving their speech sound memory and finding them easier to play. This combination of text and audio mimics the support that many people with literacy difficulties benefit from when using reader pens with traditional typed media. The same dynamic can also be said of VR games, where the player is fully immersed in a virtual world via a headset - and as gaming tech advances, who knows what other benefits to learning we might discover?
As a result of this, many people are looking at video games in a new light. Not only do they hone mechanisms that improve reading speed, but they have the added benefit of being fun. Gori notes that children are prone to give up on traditional dyslexia therapies that they find demanding or boring. Video games are something that many children with dyslexia would want to interact with in their leisure time anyway, and they shake up the traditional feel of learning and training for something more dynamic.
Gori’s study invites us to rethink how we look at video gaming from a learning perspective. Over the past decade, quiz and game-type study aids have become a teaching and revision staple. Yet many parents might deem action video games as unhelpful or anti-social when it comes to at home learning. The idea that these leisure activities can actually hone the skills of children with dyslexia and passively improve the act of reading for them is a crucial realisation.
These developments have the potential to change learning and training for a lot of young people with literacy difficulties. In turn, it could also lead to the development of new methods of improving literacy that they’re more likely to enjoy and continue with to help themselves succeed. What emerges is the idea that the long-standing link between video gaming and anti-learning sentiments requires a reappraisal, and it’ll be exciting to see where this research goes.