The short-term effects of play on reading and sensorimotor skills in young adults.

Mammals, and in particular humans, spend a large part of their childhood playing. Video-gaming has become one of the most diffused forms of play. The transient cognitive enhancement driven by positive emotions linked to play induces a cascade effect on reading and sensorimotor skills of children with developmental dyslexia and coordination disorder. Since the play activity is maintained in humans even after childhood, we hypothesized that the beneficial effect of fun play could be observed also in adults. We compared the short-term effects induced by a puzzle board game and by Mario Kart videogame in sensorimotor and reading skills in 62 young adults of which sixteen were identified as poor readers because their reading abilities were lower -2 standard deviation.Mario kart, which was the funnier and more activating game, enhanced sensorimotor abilities in the entire sample of participants, whereas a reading speed improvement was observed mainly in the poor readers. Thus, also in young adults with poor reading skills, fun play appears to increase reading speed, probably enhancing their sensorimotor neural network.