Video Games Improve Vision 20 Percent

And Mom said I was just wasting my quarters! Not only are video games said to improve concentration, now they've been found to increase visual ability, too.

The details: Playing action games (first person shooter-style games, in particular) for a few hours a day for one month increased test subjects' ability to identify letters in a cluttered field by about 20 percent. As Science Daily puts it: "In essence, playing video game improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart."

Interestingly, the study from the University of Rochester showed that vision did not only increase in the primary field (where you tend to focus while playing a game), it also improved in the peripheral parts of vision, suggesting that the video games had improved visual processing overall instead of just training you to search for items better in a narrow range.

Mind you, the study only showed improvement for action games (Unreal Tournament was the tested title) and not less visually complex games: The control group played Tetris. In other words, playing Minesweeper and Solitaire at your desk all day instead of working is not going to give you better eyesight. Tell your boss you need an Xbox 360 and Gears of War, stat.