What are the cognitive benefits of playing video games?

I will be looking at the cognitive benefits of playing video games in my literature review.  I believe, from personal experience, that being engaged in video play has a direct impact upon cognitive skills.  I have seen it in young children and elderly adults.  It will be interesting to see what the research is showing.  I have identified the following five resources:

Bavalier, D., Gentile, D. A., Green, C. S., Hyun Han, D., Merzenich, M. M., & Renshaw, P. F. (n.d.). Brains on video games. (2011). Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 12(12), 763. doi: 10.1038/nrn3135   http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.fairmontstate.edu/ps/i.do?action=interpret&id=GALE%7CA273786795&v=2.1&u=fairmt&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&authCount=1

 

Boot, W. R., Blakely, D. P., & Simons, D. J. (n.d.). Do action video games improve cognition and perception?. (2011). Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 226. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00226   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3171788/

 

Green, C. S., Sugarman, M. A., Medford, K., Klobusicky, E., & Bavalier, D. (n.d.). The effect of action video game experience on task switching. (2012). Computers in Human Bahavior, 23(3), 984-994. doi: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.fairmontstate.edu/10.1016/j.chb.2011.12.020  http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.fairmontstate.edu/science/article/pii/S0747563212000027

Oei, A. C., & Patterson, M. D. (n.d.). Enhancing cognition with video games: A multiple game training study. (2013). PLOS one, Retrieved from http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0058546

 Rebetz, C., & Betrencourt, M. (n.d.). Video game research in cognitive and educational sciences. (2007). Cognition, Brain, Behavior, XI(1), 131-142. Retrieved from http://tecfa.unige.ch/perso/mireille/papers/Rebetez_Betrancourt_CognBra.pdf

 

There are several other resources that I looked at and will draw from.  It was interesting to see the global interest in this topic as well as the time span upon which this research has been conducted.  I found several reviews of these studies in various journals and it will be intriguing to see what peer reviews have to say about these studies.