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COLOGNE, GERMANY: Gamers who completed a virtual reality (VR) game more quickly than their peers also exhibited greater levels of the general intellect and cognitive power.

The University of Cologne, University of Liechtenstein, and Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences conducted the investigation that led to this conclusion.

The findings also suggest that virtual reality games can be valuable additional tools for human resource management in businesses to forecast the work performance of a candidate.

Markus Weinmann of the University of Cologne and his colleagues’ study, “Intelligence at play: game-based assessment using a virtual-reality application,” was released in the journal Virtual Reality.

Several studies have already shown that video games may indicate or even help to develop intellectual and cognitive abilities.

As intelligence is one of the most commonly used predictors for job performance, video games could be interesting for human resource management.

Although many companies are increasingly using VR technology to recruit candidates, only a few studies have specifically investigated whether and how VR games can be used to draw conclusions about intelligence in this area.

The study by Markus Weinmann and his colleagues contributes to bridging the gap between research and practice.

Weinmann and his fellow scientists invited 103 participants to their lab. Under controlled laboratory conditions, they played the commercial VR game “Job Simulator” and completed the short version of the intelligence test BIS-4.

The researchers’ analyses show that participants who finished the game faster than others also had higher levels of general intelligence and processing capacity.

An increase of 17 per cent in processing capacity correlated with less time spent playing the game (by an average of 3.7 minutes).

The results suggest that VR games can be useful supplementary tools in companies for predicting job performance.

The results are a scientific novelty, as it has hardly been possible to conduct VR studies with state-of-the-art VR hardware.

There are thus few studies that have investigated the correlation between behaviour in VR and intelligence.

“There are already some companies that use games, so-called ‘serious games’, for recruiting. The new results are in line with this specific application of VR games and show that they can be used for recruiting,” said Weinmann.

The scientists intend to continue their research on the potential of video games for practical applications.

Among other things, they are investigating how people behave towards virtual avatars in the metaverse. (ANI)

GENEVA: Poorer countries are increasingly losing healthcare workers to wealthier ones as the latter seek to shore up their own staff losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes through active recruitment, the World Health Organization said.

The trend for nurses and other staff to leave parts of Africa or Southeast Asia for better opportunities in wealthier countries in the Middle East or Europe was already under way before the pandemic but has accelerated since, the U.N. health agency said, as global competition heats up.

“Health workers are the backbone of every health system, and yet 55 countries with some of the world’s most fragile health systems do not have enough and many are losing their health workers to international migration,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general.

He was referring to a new WHO list of vulnerable countries which has added eight extra states since it was last published in 2020. They are: Comoros, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, East Timor, Laos, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Jim Campbell, director of the WHO’s health workforce department, told journalists safeguards for countries on the WHO list were important so they “can continue to rebuild and recover from the pandemic without an additional loss of workers to migration”.

Some 115,000 health care workers died from COVID around the world during the pandemic but many more left their professions due to burnout and depression, he said. As a sign of the strain, protests and strikes have been organised in more than 100 countries since the pandemic began, he added, including in Britain and the United States.

“We need to protect the workforce if we wish to ensure the population has access to care,” said Campbell.

Asked which countries were attracting more workers, he said wealthy OECD countries and Gulf states but added that competition between African countries had also intensified.

The WHO says it is not against migration of workers if it was managed appropriately. In 2010, it released a voluntary global code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel and urges its members to follow it.

(VOA/Reuters)