From New Scientist:
Video games don’t train your brain
Does playing computer games boost your brainpower? Not necessarily, seems to be the answer.
Walter Boot and colleagues at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, found that non-gamers showed no improvement in memory skills or the ability to multitask after spending more than 20 hours on one of three video games. This appears to contradict previous studies which detected superior mental aptitudes among habitual gamers.
Any gamers care to discuss?
I’m not saying that video games do improve aptitude, but this seems like saying “Weight lifting does not increase muscle mass. Researchers showed no major increase in muscle mass among non-athletes who lifted weights for one week. This contradicts previous results which detected muscle increase in regular weight lifters.”
I don’t think there’s much to discuss, you’ve nailed it quite clearly. 20 hours of game playing is orders of magnitude short of the time spent by “habitual gamers”. This is like disputing the smoking/cancer link by examining the health of a group of people who each smoked 20 cigarettes last weekend.