Study finds that playing Mario Kart makes you a better real-life driver

To establish a causal link between action video games and visuomotor control skills, Li and colleagues recruited participants who had no action video gaming experience to take part in a training study. The participants were randomly assigned to either an action video game group or a control group, and they completed a total of 10 1-hour training sessions. The action video game group trained by playing Mario Kart, using a steering-wheel controller to drive a go-cart on a track. The control group played Roller Coaster Tycoon III, using a mouse and keyboard to build and maintain amusement parks.

The two games featured similarly complex visual scenes and were both relatively easy to learn. Importantly, the two groups showed similar levels of engagement with the games and similar improvement in performance over time.

The data showed that playing Mario Kart, a fast-paced action video game, improved participants’ visuomotor control skills on the target dot task after 5 hours of training; they showed even greater improvement after 10 training sessions. Those who played Roller Coaster Tycoon, a non-action strategy game, showed no such improvement over time.