D&D and Psychology

I caught a post on Gaming Brouhaha that linked to a very interesting article by Nancy Darling on Psychology Today that reports the psychologist experience with her kids approaching at Dungeons & Dragons.

The original Dungeons & Dragons set

The article is especially interesting for us geeks because it shows the educated point of view of an attentive parent who wasn't confident with the game and, by consequence, not completely at her ease, at the beginning, with her kids playing at it.
Nancy tells mostly of the interleaving relationships of the members of the group with themselves, the dungeon master and the game.
The picture that comes by once you reach the end of the piece is something that validates somehow what I -as a person proud of his twenty something years of gaming-  always suspected. As the author observation suggests, Role Playing Games stimulate cognitive skills, especially concerning the manipulation of abstract ideas. More of that RPGs fit into the kids development because they give them the chance to experience discussing and arguing on abstract ideas (i.e. which door to open in a dungeon, who must speak to the village mayor and take the protection ring, and so on).
Today I'm in my thirties and I continue playing at D&D -even if not so often as I would- and I can't wait the day when my kid will be old enough that I can give him his first D&D player's manual.