Bingo Keeps You Young!    

Playing bingo can keep the mind in trim - and the older you are the more agile you may be, researchers have found.

Tests showed bingo players were faster and more accurate than non-bingo players in a range of tests measuring mental speed, memory and the ability to pick up information from the environment around them.

Players have to be able to check numbers off quickly and need rapid hand-eye co-ordination - but these skills had been thought to decline with age

And unlike chess, bridge and backgammon, which need skills that are stored in the brain and remembered when needed, bingo requires speedy identification within time constraints.

Julie Winstone, from the University of Southampton's Center for Visual Cognition at the Department of Psychology has been testing bingo players' mental agility over the last year.

She studied the responses of 112 people aged 18 to 40, and older people aged between 60 and 82.

Half of each group played bingo, and the others did not.

She presented her findings to the Annual Conference of the Psychologists Special Interest Group in Older People in Winchester.

Winstone said it was suspected that long-term mental activity - such a bingo - could stave off the decline of cognitive abilities, such as speed and accuracy and recognition of patterns.

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