Digital Puzzle Games could be Good for Memory in Older Adults

Older adults who play digital puzzle games have the same memory abilities as people in their 20s, a new study has shown.

The study, from the University of York, also found that adults aged 60 and over who play digital puzzle games had a greater ability to ignore irrelevant distractions, but older adults who played strategy games did not show the same improvements in memory or concentration.

It is known that as humans age, their mental abilities tend to decrease, particularly the ability to remember a number of things at a single time - known as working memory. Working memory is thought to peak between the ages of 20 and 30 before slowly declining as a person gets older.

Previous research, however, has shown that the way we hold information in the brain changes as we get older, and so the York team looked at whether the impacts of particular types of mental stimulation, such as gaming, also had altered effects depending on age.

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

"It instead seems to be the strategy elements of the games - planning and problem solving for example - that stimulates better memory and attention in young people. We don't see this same effect in older adults, however, and more research is needed to understand why this is. We can't yet rule out that the strategy games played by older people are not as difficult as the games played by younger people and that the level of challenge might be important in memory improvement."

The study included older and younger adults playing digital games that they would normally play in their 'real lives'. This resulted in a wide range of games to be tested alongside a digital experiment that required participants to memorise images, whilst being distracted.

Dr Joe Cutting, from the University of York's Department of Computer Science, said: "Generally people have a good ability to ignore irrelevant distractions, something we call 'encoding distraction'. We would expect for example that a person could memorise the name of a street whilst being distracted by a child or a dog, but this ability does decline as we age.

"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-olds who had not played puzzle games."

Older people were however more likely to forget elements committed to memory whilst being distracted if they only played strategy games, and young people were less successful at focusing attention if they played only puzzle games.

The researchers say future study could focus on why there is a difference between impacts of types of games depending on the age of a player and if this is connected to how the brain stores information as people age.

Joe Cutting, Bethany Copeland, Fiona McNab.
Higher working memory capacity and distraction-resistance associated with strategy (not action) game playing in younger adults, but puzzle game playing in older adults.
Heliyon, Volume 9, Issue 8, 2023. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e19098

Most Popular Now

Using Data and AI to Create Better Healt…

Academic medical centers could transform patient care by adopting principles from learning health systems principles, according to researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and the University of California, San Diego. In...

AI Medical Receptionist Modernizing Doct…

A virtual medical receptionist named "Cassie," developed through research at Texas A&M University, is transforming the way patients interact with health care providers. Cassie is a digital-human assistant created by Humanate...

Northern Ireland Completes Nationwide Ro…

Go-lives at Western and Southern health and social care trusts mean every pathology service is using the same laboratory information management system; improving efficiency and quality. An ambitious technology project to...

AI Tool Set to Transform Characterisatio…

A multinational team of researchers, co-led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, has developed and tested a new AI tool to better characterise the diversity of individual cells within...

AI Detects Hidden Heart Disease Using Ex…

Mass General Brigham researchers have developed a new AI tool in collaboration with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to probe through previously collected CT scans and identify...

Human-AI Collectives Make the Most Accur…

Diagnostic errors are among the most serious problems in everyday medical practice. AI systems - especially large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT-4, Gemini, or Claude 3 - offer new ways...

MHP-Net: A Revolutionary AI Model for Ac…

Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer globally and a leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Accurate segmentation of liver tumors is a crucial step for the management of the...

Highland Marketing Announced as Official…

Highland Marketing has been named, for the second year running, the official communications partner for HETT Show 2025, the UK's leading digital health conference and exhibition. Taking place 7-8 October...

Groundbreaking TACIT Algorithm Offers Ne…

Researchers at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed a novel algorithm that could provide a revolutionary tool for determining the best options for patients - both in the treatment...

The Many Ways that AI Enters Rheumatolog…

High-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) is the standard to diagnose and assess progression in interstitial lung disease (ILD), a key feature in systemic sclerosis (SSc). But AI-assisted interpretation has the potential...