Do Videogames Improve Hand-Eye Coordination More Than Sports?

Sports have always been regarded as the best way to improve hand-eye coordination, but recently it has been proven that videogames may improve it just as much, if not more than sports. A recent study has shown that video game improved surgeon's hand-eye coordination enough that it was recommended that surgeons play a specially developed videogame before surgery in order to "warm up." The study found that surgeons who played video games for at least three hours a week made 37 percent fewer mistakes and performed the procedure 27 percent faster than those who did not play video games at all.

Although most mainstream sports are better for general coordination and balance, videogames are arguably better for improving fine motor skills (stability and steadiness of the hands and the ability to perform delicate actions). A quick look at the actions involved in a major sport such as baseball as compared to videogames should show the differences in hand-eye coordination improvement. In baseball you are using your eyes to track the ball while swinging your bat at where your eyes see the ball, this takes a lot of coordination as you need to maintain your balance, have a steady swing, have good bat accuracy, maintain enough bat speed to overpower the ball, and keep be able to predict where the baseball is going to be so that you can hit it. While playing a videogame (a First Person Shooter for example) you have to watch the screen, scan the screen for enemies or objects of interest, use your thumbs to move the analog sticks to navigate on-screen by maintaining the right pressure on the stick in the direction you would like to move, move your thumb off the analog sticks to press other buttons, and perform a lot of small adjustments while watching the screen. While playing baseball requires you to be more coordinated in general, playing a videogame requires you to use your eyes to adjust the amount of force each individual finger is using while your eyes analyze what each individual movement has done; the process then repeats itself as the gamer makes corrections or sees a new target.

For my experiment I had to find a hand-eye coordination test; I found one designed for testing the effects of gravity on hand eye coordination and modified it for usage in my experiment. The test worked by having people follow a path without leaving it in as little time as possible. Then using a specific formula I would calculate their score that took into account the time taken, the amount of times they went outside the path, and the total distance they traveled outside the path. I then found two athletes that play video games, two athletes that don't play video games, two gamers that aren't athletes, and two people that are neither. They then took my hand-eye coordination test three times and I found the average score they got.. I then averaged the scores of the two people in each category and came up with the list ranking. In my experiment those who were both athletes and gamers had the highest hand-eye coordination score of 4.69. After them came the gamers with a score of 4.37. Next came the athletes with a score of 3.05, and in last came those who were neither gamers nor athletes with a score of 2.68.

My hypothesis was that those who were both gamers and athletes would do the best, followed by the gamers, then the athletes, and finally those who did neither. After conducting my experiment my hypothesis was proven to be 100% correct. I thought the experiment would turn out the way it did because I think that gaming requires more hand-eye coordination than athletics, but most athletics require more total body coordination. If I had tested a ping pong champion or someone who played another sport that mainly uses the hands they probably would have beaten your average gamer.

I think that my experiment was accurate, although it could have been improved by getting more subjects for each category or by using the "pros" of each respective category in either to see the best of each category.

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