Video Games May Improve Kids’ Brains, Study Finds
VIDEO GAMES – Recent research suggests that playing video games improves intelligence in young children.
Parents frequently worry about the negative effects of video games on their kids, including missing out on exercise, social problems, and mental health issues. However, a large new US study that was published in JAMA Network Open on Monday suggests there might possibly be cognitive advantages to the popular pastime.
Based on a report from ABS-CBN, Bader Chaarani, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, told AFP that as a passionate gamer and expert in neuroimagery, he was immediately drawn to the topic.
Prior studies have concentrated on the negative impacts of gaming, connecting it to depression and an increase in violence. However, the very small participant numbers in these research, particularly those involving brain imaging, were a limitation, according to Charaani.
Data from the large and ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which is supported by the National Institutes of Health, were examined by Chaarani and his colleagues.
Around 2,000 9 and 10-year-old children, divided into two groups: those who never played games and those who played for three hours or more a day, were examined for survey responses, cognitive test scores, and brain scans. This limit was set since it goes beyond the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation for older children about screen usage, which is one or two hours of video games per day.
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– Impulses and memory –
Each group was assessed in 2 tasks.
In the first task, the kids were asked to press left or right as quickly as they could after seeing arrows pointing left or right.
They were also instructed to cease pressing anything when they saw a “stop” signal to measure how effectively they could control their impulses.
In the second task, their working memory was tested by having them look at pictures of people’s faces and then decide whether or not they matched.
According to the report, the study discovered that video gamers consistently outperformed the other participants on both tasks after applying statistical techniques to account for potential confounding factors including parental income, IQ, and mental health symptoms.
The children’s brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they perform the tasks. The brains of video gamers showed more activity in regions associated with attention and memory.
“The results raise the intriguing possibility that video gaming may provide a cognitive training experience with measurable neurocognitive effects,” the authors said.
According to Chaarani, it is currently impossible to determine whether increased gaming is the cause of or a result of greater cognitive function. As the study goes on and they revisit the same kids as they get older, the team hopes to have a clearer response.
This will also help in ruling out any further contributing factors, such as the children’s living situation, physical activity, and sleep quality.
Though around age 10, kids tend to choose action games like Fortnite or Assassin’s Creed, future research could benefit from knowing what game genres the kids were playing.
However, he said that the findings suggested playing video games would be a more productive use of screen time than viewing films on YouTube, which has no obvious cognitive benefits.
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