NRSC 2110 Blog

Last week I returned home from running some errands to find my husband on his laptop playing an action packed video game while the kids are sitting on the floor playing games on the Wii. I want to let them relax but I'm worried they are all killing brain cells with these mindless games.

Maybe, I worry too much? The article Children Wired: For Better or Worse found in the September 9, 2010 issue of Neuron magazine describes some benefits to playing action-packed video games. This is good because in this highly technological world we live in I'd be fighting a losing battle in my home.

Games that showed the highest benefits were full of action and were multidimensional. These games also pull the player in emotionally. It is important to note that studies were conducted with a young adults and not children because of the violence in some of the video games. Some enhancements have been found in vision, attention, cognition, and motor control. The medical community and healthcare professionals are seeing benefits in gaming for patients also. Some research being done shows people with amblyopia (a developmental deficit of vision) and those with attention issues are benefitting from playing video games.

For the younger kids, preschool programming showed some cognitive benefits, in particular an increase in the vocabulary of preschoolers when they view shows like Dora the Explorer. For obvious reasons shows like Teletubies actually prove to reduce language skills. Preschool programs that elicit responses, labels objects, and models proper language in addition to modeling social skills benefit children. However, the new baby/infant videos do not seem to have the same types of benefits. Babies benefit from watching their parents interact in the world. This is not something that can be gained from a video or TV show.

It may be that there is a link in the social skills being taught in preschool programming and the high intensity emotional component of action packed video games that leads to the cognitive benefits that are being observed in these studies. Educational computer games incorporate repetition and interaction as a way of teaching "educational" information but do not have an emotional component. Therefore educational computer programs do not seem to have the same benefits as the emotionally charged video games.

Until now the world of education and the world of behavioral science has studied technology. PET scans and fMRI are allowing neuroscience to share in this new area of research. These new brain-imaging techniques are allowing for real time studies of the brain. This is beneficial to studying the effects gaming has on the brain. Studies are finding that video games are affecting reward pathways. Neuroscience will be able to shed light on the effects these games are having on executive function and control of attention, as well as, reward pathways. Hopefully new studies will emerge that will incorporate neuroscience and technology so educational programs can be developed that will illicit the same learning benefits as action packed video. Wouldn't it be cool if learning history and math on the computer were just as fun (and beneficial) as playing one of those action packed video games?!