So, where are they learning the skills from?

[Carl Cross]

Morning all,

Many of you will have seen this good news story in one form or
another:

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2011/110804.html

Although the idea that reading early and often is beneficial won't be
news to many it's always nice to see it reinforced.

But I wonder if you picked up on this:

“Mr Taylor [the author of the report] also found that playing computer
games frequently did not make it less likely that 16-year-olds would
be in a professional or managerial career at 33, but this was linked
to a lower chance of going to university.”

Interesting. So what's going on here?

Is it simply that middle class parents (whose children are likely to
go on to study for degrees) promote reading over other "less valuable"
leisure pursuits such as watching commercial telly and playing video
games? Is it that those poor souls who’s well meaning middle class
parents bought them a BBC or Electron got bored with Elite and Chuckie
Egg and started studying particle physics instead?

Remember this is a longitudinal study looking at children born in the
70s. Coincidentally this is both my generation and the age of the
statistical "average" video gamer.

Notice that playing games regularly did not harm their chances of
getting a “good” job just of going to University. Could it be that
playing games helped them gain the skills the needed to access those
jobs?

Certainly real companies believe that playing games now can help real
world leaders practice their skills virtually:

(http://www.ibm.com/ibm/files/L668029W94664H98/
ibm_gio_gaming_report.pdf)

Is it too much of stretch to believe that the multitasking needed for
success at 80s RTS Stonkers! or the lateral thinking needed to beat
the Zelda dungeons gave my generation the same skills?

What do you think?

Carl.