by Jodi "PunkLit" McClure
An enemy jungler jumps out at you from the bushes
unexpected. You activate your shield and hit him with a stun a split second
later, before backing under your turret. Reaction time, that tiny interval
between stimulus and response, needs to be extremely fast in pro gamers. Your
brain has to make a nearly instantaneous assessment so you can act accordingly.
It differs a bit from reflexes, which are involuntary or instinctive movements
you make without conscious thought. With reaction time, you need to have a high
capacity for strategic thinking.
For
visual based stimuli, it's possible to decrease your reaction time with three
weeks of practice, and the effects of practice last for at least three weeks,
so continual practice should keep your reaction time at its trainable best. In
fact, there are plenty of gaming sites online (like Aim400kg) with programs specifically made to help you hone your aim, speed and
accuracy.
Gamers (and everyone else) tend to react more quickly to
auditory queues than visual ones, because an auditory
stimulus only takes 10 msec to reach the brain, but a visual stimulus takes
20-40 msec. You probably don't even realize how much you rely on auditory clues
in League until you play the game with no sound. Then, you're stuck watching out for things
you normally listened for, like the sound of Varus drawing back his bow or Zac
preparing to jump.
Training alone won't help you with
speed, though. Age and sex are both strong factors in how quickly you react,
both instinctively and intentionally. While most people tend to believe it is
teens who have the fastest reaction time, repeated studies have found the
optimal age for reaction time is in your mid to late twenties. Ditto with
reflexes. It's also interesting to note that men have slightly faster reaction
times than women, a disadvantage not reduced by practice or training. Perhaps
this in part explains why natural-born female gamers haven't breached the
highest levels of pro-dom.
Another important factor affecting
reaction time is 'arousal,' or your state of attention, including muscular
readiness. Reaction time is fastest with an intermediate level of arousal, and
lessens when the player is too relaxed or tense. A good night's rest is
essential to performance, as is the experienced calm of a confident player.
Plus, in the cool air of the LCS studios, the hand warmers we see players
gripping before their games helps to both stimulate and loosen the finger
muscles for maximum flexibility. Visual fatigue also plays a part, although the
jury is still out on the effectiveness of Gunnars and other gaming glasses.
Despite most of us not worrying
about our own execution on a scientific scale, video game players in general still
have faster reaction times than their peers (up to 25% faster.) Gaming also
improves a players perception, attention and probabilistic inference (aka
decision making), and can enhance the players skills and performance both in and out of game - a fact the US Military
(and Sci-fi writers) take full advantage of. (Ender's Game, anyone?)
If you want to be a pro gamer, training to improve your
reaction time and reflexes could be vital to your success, and good
old-fashioned practice really does help in this regard. Try out online training
games to improve your click speed / aim, and make sure you are playing at your
awake, attentive and confident best. Don't play when you're tired or tense, or when
you've just woken up and your body isn't functioning yet. (And remember to fine
tune your computer settings, because latency is the one reaction time killer
you can't do much else about.)
Ref:
Improved Probabilistic Inference as a General Learning Mechanism with Action Video Games by C. Shawn Green, Alexandre Pouget and Daphne Bavelier
Military uses video games for training troops by Mathias Ask
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