Word: mclaughlin
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...that last item that most interests psychologists Anne McLaughlin and Jason Allaire at North Carolina State University. The duo are part of a team that was just awarded $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation to fund a four-year study of cognitive decline in the elderly - specifically, whether playing certain video games might help slow the effects of aging. The theory is that the strategy, memory and problem-solving skills necessary for mastering certain games may translate to benefits in the real world, beyond a glowing computer screen...
While funding is flowing quickly to new studies similar to McLaughlin and Allaire's - the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for example, has pledged $8.5 million to study the impact of video games on everything from Alzheimer's disease to driving skills - there is little existing evidence that gaming, which is widely dismissed as an elaborate form of mind rot, really holds any potential to slow the effects of aging. "I think it is silly for someone to run out and buy a game with the hope that it is going to help them age better. There is no proof...
...McLaughlin and Allaire's new study will follow 270 seniors as they play the Wii game Boom Blox. Game play involves demolishing targets like a medieval castle or a spaceship using an arsenal of weapons such as slingshots and cannonballs. While those particular skills may not seem transferable to offscreen life, McLaughlin says she and her colleagues chose Boom Blox specifically because it requires a wide range of real-world skills, including memory, special ability, reasoning and problem-solving...
...design. They will then study the effects of the new game in the same group of elderly players. "One of our main goals is to produce guidelines for producing games for older adults. Part of it is making it fun so it does not feel like work," adds McLaughlin...
...Malia in the Christmas pageant. But if the experience of past Camp David chaplains is any guide, Cash won't necessarily have the opportunity to form a pastoral relationship with Obama. "We used to tell people our job was to run like a five-star resort," said Patrick McLaughlin, who was chaplain at Camp David from 2002 to 2005, in an interview with Religion News Service. "One of the things you value when you go on vacation is peace and quiet." His contact with Bush outside worship services, McLaughlin said, was "very little...