Time to dig out Operation: Gamers may have a new secret weapon in the unlikely form of cute kitten pictures

Those who played a game of Operation immediately after viewing adorable animal images played 44% better than they did when they were not shown the pictures - but they also took 12% longer to complete the task, scientists said.

“This finding suggests that viewing cute images makes participants behave more deliberately and perform tasks with greater time and care,” the researchers wrote in the US journal Plos One.

Anyone willing to try this experiment, tweet us your results or let us know in the comments section below.

Words: Anna Pollitt. Pictures: Rex Features/Hasbro

Cute animals help improve concentration