Bingo as a Fountain of Youth?

Won't your players be happy to hear that playing bingo may offer more benefits than originally thought.  People play bingo for a number of reasons. Some play for the social aspect, they like to spend the time with their friends and family. Some play for something to do, to get out of the house. Chances are players do not even think about improving their minds or sharpening their memory, but in fact this may be yet another benefit of playing bingo. A recent study conducted by Psychologist Iseli Krauss, EdD, of Clarion University suggests that playing bingo keeps the mind alive. In her study, Krauss used a group of 200 people. Half were experienced "expert" bingo players and half were inexperienced college students and volunteers. The "expert" group was compiled of older people, mostly women, who regularly played 12 or more cards, but made no mistakes when playing exactly 12 cards.  In one experiment Krauss varied the complexity by having each successive game more complex than the one before it. All players played 12 cards, and began with standard horizontal, vertical or diagonal line bingo. The more complex games were made up of patterns that even the experts had never seen before, such as a cannon, a chair, an arrow, etc.  The more complex the game, the better the experts did, making fewer mistakes than the inexperienced. At the most complex level, everyone made fewer errors, but the inexperienced still made more mistakes than the experts.  According to Krauss, the older expert players are at an advantage because they have developed and continue to develop the skill of dividing their attention where the inexperienced players can concentrate on only one thing at a time. The inexperienced players would look for the number then go back and look for the pattern the number called may have completed.  "What we think is happening," said Krauss, "is that the number search becomes automatic and takes very little attention for the experts. But for the inexperienced, it was not an easy thing to look for those numbers."  According to Krauss, many skills decline with old age while others, like bingo-playing, remain at a relatively high level even in advance years of practiced continually. Krauss believes, "Playing bingo at a high level and paying attention while playing can enhance the ability to use the mind longer in life."  Although anyone can play bingo, Krauss say there are a few requirements needed to play the game well. Players must be able to hear and see well, they must have hand-eye coordination, they must be able to remember the number called and the pattern they are trying to find and they must have divided attention, the ability to look for numbers and patterns simultaneously.  Kruass is currently working on other bingo studies related to the cognitive processes in the elderly. Let your players know that by coming to your bingo they are not only sharpening their social skill, but there is also a very strong possibility they are sharpening their minds!

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