Video game and children’s cognitive abilities
DESPITE old fears that bad effects follow excessive video game playing or questionable game choices, researchers found those factors mattered little, if any, in children’s brain health.
New research findings challenge the fears parents have been hearing for years that children who spend hour after hour playing video games, or choose games of certain genres, would manifest unhealthy results in their cognitive ability.
In reaching the conclusions, researchers examined the video gaming habits of 160 diverse urban public-school preteen students (70% from lower income households), which represents an age group less studied in previous research. Participating students reported playing video games an average of 2.5 hours daily, with the group’s heaviest gamers putting in as much as 4.5 hours each day.
The team looked for association between the students’ video game play and their performance on the standardized Cognitive Ability Test 7, known as CogAT, which evaluates verbal, quantitative and nonverbal/spatial skills. CogAT was chosen as a standard measure, in contrast to the teacher-reported grades or self-reported learning assessments that previous research projects have relied on.
Researchers also found that the duration of play nor choice of video game genres showed no no direct linkage between video game playing and cognitive performance, despite what had been assumed
But the study revealed another side of the issue, too. Certain types of games described as helping children build healthy cognitive skills also presented no measurable effects, in spite of the games’ marketing messages.
But the experts also caution that gaming time took the heaviest players’ away from other, more productive activities — homework, to be specific — in a process psychologists call displacement. But even in those cases, the differences were slight between those participants and their peers’ CogAT measures of cognitive abilities.
“Reasonable amounts of video gaming should be OK, which will be delightful news for the kids. Just keep an eye out for obsessive behavior,” said Zhang. “When it comes to video games, finding common ground between parents and young kids is tricky enough. At least now we understand that finding balance in childhood development is the key, and there’s no need for us to over-worry about video gaming.” (National Science Foundation)
