Researching Games

A recent study by Texas A&M International University chair and associate professor, psychology Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson shows that childhood media consumption is not a predictor for future adult criminal behavior.

The long-held (and as of yet unproven) argument has been that violent video games or other violent media have a direct causation to violent crimes like school shootings. But according to a new study from TAMIU, genetics, environment, the lack of maternal nurturing, and a number of other factors combined are better predictors of adult criminality. The TAMIU study used data from a National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which included a representative sample of U.S. adolescents.

Dr. Ferguson said:

We basically find that genetics and some social issues combine to predict later adult arrests. Despite ongoing concerns about media influences, media exposure does not seem to function as a risk factor for adult criminality.

Genetics alone don't seem to trigger criminal behavior, but in combination with harsh upbringing, you can see negative outcomes. In our sample, experiencing maternal warmth seemed to reduce the impact of genetics on adult criminality.

Researchers also noted that other factors such as family environment, peers and socioeconomic status can also be predictors of adult criminality. The research also found that being exposed to maternal affection may have the potential to decrease criminal behavior in individuals who might otherwise be at risk.

Ferguson concluded:

People may object morally to some of the content that exists in the media, but the question is whether the media can predict criminal behavior. The answer seems to be no.

The Effect of Violent and Nonviolent Video Games on Heart Rate Variability, Sleep, and Emotions in Adolescents With Different Violent Gaming Habits

By Malena Ivarsson, BA, Martin Anderson, MD, Torbjorn Akerstedt, PhD and Frank Lindblad, MD

Abstract

Objective To study cardiac, sleep-related, and emotional reactions to playing violent games versus nonviolent video games  in adolescents with different gaming habits.

Methods Thirty boys (aged 13--16 years), half of them low-exposed (1 hour/day) and half high-exposed (3 hour/day) to violent games, played a violent games/nonviolent video games for 2 hours during two different evenings in their homes. Heart rate and heart rate variability were registered from before start until next morning. A questionnaire about emotional reactions was administered after gaming sessions and a sleep diary on the following mornings.

Results During sleep, there were significant interaction effects between group and gaming condition for heart rate. There was also a significant interaction for sleep quality, and sadness after playing.

Conclusions Different combinations of the extent of previous violent games and experimental exposure to a violent games or an nonviolent video games are associated with different reaction patterns---physiologically, emotionally, and sleep related. Desensitizing effects or selection bias stand out as possible explanations.

Abstract: Video games are an increasingly popular leisure activity. As many of best-selling games contain hyper-realistic violence, many researchers and policymakers have concluded that violent games cause violent behaviors.

Evidence on a causal effect of violent games on violence is usually based on laboratory experiments finding violent games increase aggression. Before drawing policy conclusions about the effect of violent games on actual behavior, these experimental studies should be subjected to tests of external validity.

Our study uses a quasi-experimental methodology to identify the short and medium run effects of violent game sales on violent crime using time variation in retail unit sales data of the top 50 selling video games and violent criminal offenses from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for each week of 2005 to 2008. We instrument for game sales with game characteristics, game quality and time on the market, and estimate that, while a one percent increase in violent games is associated with up to a 0.03% decrease in violent crime, non-violent games appear to have no effect on crime rates.

• Scott Cunningham of Baylor University

• Benjamin Engelstatter of Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) - Information and Communication Technologies Research Group

• Michael R. Ward of University of Texas at Arlington - College of Business Administration - Department of Economics

April 7, 2011

A longitudinal study of the association between violent video game play and aggression among adolescents.

Willoughby T, Adachi PJ, Good M. Department of Psychology, Brock University, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

In the past 2 decades, correlational and experimental studies have found a positive association between violent video game play and aggression. There is less evidence, however, to support a long-term relation between these behaviors.

This study examined sustained violent video game play and adolescent aggressive behavior across the high school years and directly assessed the socialization (violent video game play predicts aggression over time) versus selection hypotheses (aggression predicts violent video game play over time).

Adolescents  were surveyed annually from Grade 9 to Grade 12 about their video game play and aggressive behaviors. Nonviolent video game play, frequency of overall video game play, and a comprehensive set of potential 3rd variables were included as covariates in each analysis.

Sustained violent video game play was significantly related to steeper increases in adolescents' trajectory of aggressive behavior over time. Moreover, greater violent video game play predicted higher levels of aggression over time, after controlling for previous levels of aggression, supporting the socialization hypothesis.

In contrast, no support was found for the selection hypothesis. Nonviolent video game play also did not predict higher levels of aggressive behavior over time. Our findings, and the fact that many adolescents play video games for several hours every day, underscore the need for a greater understanding of the long-term relation between violent video games and aggression, as well as the specific game characteristics (e.g., violent content, competition, pace of action) that may be responsible for this association.

The Daily Mail researched a few press release quotes.

Lead researcher Professor Teena Willoughby said:

The current study is the first to demonstrate a relation between sustained violent video game play and the progression of aggressive behaviour.

It is clear that there is a long-term association between violent video games and aggression. This is an important and concerning finding, particularly in light of the hours that youth spend playing these games.

Professor Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University, said:

The study as a whole does provide one of the strongest pieces of empirical evidence to date that there is a direct relationship between playing violent video games and subsequent aggressive behaviour.'

 There is a long-lasting and at times intense debate about the possible link between violent computer games and aggressiveness. A group of researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, are now questioning the entire basis of the discussion. In a recently published article, they present a new study showing that, more than anything, a good ability to cooperate is a prerequisite for success in the violent gaming environment.

A study, authored by Ulrika Bennerstedt, Jonas Ivarsson and Jonas Linderoth and titled How gamers manage aggression: Situating skills in collaborative computer games , is presented in International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.

The Gothenburg-based research group spent hundreds of hours playing online games and observing other gamers, including on video recordings. They focused on complex games with portrayals of violence and aggressive action where the participants have to fight with and against each other. The situations gamers encounter in these games call for sophisticated and well-coordinated collaboration. We analysed what characteristics and knowledge the gamers need to have in order to be successful, says Jonas Ivarsson, Docent (Reader) at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning.

It turns out that a successful gamer is strategic and technically knowledgeable, and has good timing. Inconsiderate gamers, as well as those who act aggressively or emotionally, generally do not do well.

In a nutshell, we're questioning the whole gaming and violence debate, since it's not based on a real problem but rather on some hypothetical reasoning, says Ivarsson.

Recent video games have begun depicting religion as a violent, problematic force, according to research from a new University of Missouri study.

Greg Perreault, a doctoral student at University of Missouri's School of Journalism, studied five extremely popular games from the last few years that incorporate religion heavily into their storylines: Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Assassin's Creed, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow , and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

In each case, Perreault found that religion became equated with violence within the video games' narratives. Perreault said in a press release:

In most of these games there was a heavy emphasis on a 'Knights Templar' and crusader motifs. Not only was the violent side of religion emphasized, but in each of these games religion created a problem that the main character must overcome, whether it is a direct confrontation with religious zealots or being haunted by religious guilt.

Just because religion was associated with violence, however, does not mean it was always depicted as evil. For example, Perreault noted that in Mass Effect 2 , the character of Thane is an extremely spiritual assassin who assists the player.

Of those five games, Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion all deal with religions created specifically for the game. The remaining two titles, Assassin's Creed and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow , both center around Catholicism.

Still, Perreault emphasized that he did not believe game developers were attacking religion with these themes:

It doesn't appear that game developers are trying to purposefully bash organized religion in these games. I believe they are only using religion to create stimulating plot points in their story lines. If you look at video games across the board, most of them involve violence in some fashion because violence is conflict and conflict is exciting. Religion appears to get tied in with violence because that makes for a compelling narrative.

While Perreault's study of just five games is far from an exhaustive survey of all of modern video games, he does believe game writers should be aware of how they use religion in their plots.

A new report from the Swedish Media Council comes to the conclusion that there's no conclusive evidence that there is no evidence that violent computer games cause aggressive behavior .

The Media Council is a Swedish government agency in charge of film and media classification and whose mission statement is to reduce the risk of harmful media influences among minors and to empower minors as conscious media users.

The findings are based on a review of more than 100 articles about violent games and aggression which have been published in international scientific journals since 2000. The review found that there is a clear and statistically significant link between violent games and aggressive behavior. But the review also found that many of those same studies use different methods to measure aggression, and few produced a clear connection to violent behavior. Many of those same studies suffered from serious methodological deficiencies and didn't provide sufficient evidence to establish a causal relationship.

The studies that did attempt to examine other causes of aggression found that factors such as poor physical health or family problems were factors that lead to violent behavior and a propensity to play violent games.

If research can't provide any simple answers about how games make children aggressive, perhaps we adults should stop judging the games children play based on whether they are violent or not, Media Council researcher Ulf Dalquist said in a statement.

A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis of long-term effects of violent video game play on the brain has found changes in brain regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control in young adult men after one week of game play. The results of the study were presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

The controversy over whether or not violent video games are potentially harmful to users has raged for many years, making it as far as the Supreme Court in 2010. But there has been little scientific evidence demonstrating that the games have a prolonged negative neurological effect.

For the first time, we have found that a sample of randomly assigned young adults showed less activation in certain frontal brain regions following a week of playing violent video games at home, said Yang Wang, M.D., assistant research professor in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. These brain regions are important for controlling emotion and aggressive behavior.

For the study, 22 healthy adult males, age 18 to 29, with low past exposure to violent video games were randomly assigned to two groups of 11. Members of the first group were instructed to play a shooting video game for 10 hours at home for one week and refrain from playing the following week. The second group did not play a violent video game at all during the two-week period. Each of the 22 men underwent fMRI at the beginning of the study, with follow-up exams at one and two weeks.

The results showed that after one week of violent game play, the video game group members showed less activation in the left inferior frontal lobe during the emotional task and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex during the counting task, compared to their baseline results and the results of the control group after one week. After the second week without game play, the changes to the executive regions of the brain were diminished.

These findings indicate that violent video game play has a long-term effect on brain functioning, Dr. Wang said.

Coauthors are Tom Hummer, Ph.D., William Kronenberger, Ph.D., Kristine Mosier, D.M.D., Ph.D., and Vincent P. Mathews, M.D. This research is supported by the Center for Successful Parenting, Indiana.

Game Politics points out that the Center for Successful Parenting, Indiana is in fact a nutter group with a website that is designed for parents to learn about the negative side effects of violent video.

Abstract

A one-year longitudinal study with 324 German third and fourth graders was conducted in order to find out whether a preference for violent electronic games socializes children to become more aggressive or whether aggressive individuals tend to select this type of game.

Cross-lagged panel analyses suggest that children who were rated as openly aggressive at Time 1 intensified their preference for violent electronic games over time. We determined that it could be ruled out that this selection effect was due to a number of underlying variables ranging from ecological variables (neighborhood) to family variables (migration status, older brother) and child variables (gender, self-esteem, level of achievement).

Press

Based on article from monstersandcritics.com

The research suggested there was a risk that this preference for violent video games would become entrenched in these children. However, the researchers found no evidence in the group they studied that violent computer and video games led to increased aggression in real life.

This is the good news from our study into the educational effects of media, said Jens Vogelgesang of Hohenheim University: But it should be noted that this applies expressly only to the group of 8-to-12 year olds that we looked into in a study on the effects.

One of the researchers seems disappointed that results don't support the concept that games cause violence. The research team leader Maria von Salisch throws in a totally out of context comment:

In the case of older children, the negative effects from violent games on their behaviour has already been documented and this remains a cause for concern.

We are unable to rule out the possibility that an entrenched preference for violent computer and video games might over the course of a game-playing career lead to greater readiness to commit acts of violence.

What sort of researchers title their supposed scientific study with nutter phrases like 'downward spiral' anyway?

Being exposed to strong language on TV as well as playing video games are linked to aggression in teenagers, a university report shows.

A US study in the medical journal Pediatrics appears to be the first to examine the impact of strong language.

To explore the issue, scholars at the mormon Brigham Young University in Utah gathered information from 223 middle school students.

Family life professor at the university, Sarah Coyne, explained that the findings revealed that exposure to bad language is associated with acceptance and use of similar language, which in turn influences both physical and verbal aggression. Professor Coyne said:

On the whole, it's a moderate effect.

We even ran the statistical model the opposite way to test if the violent kids used more profanity and then sought it out in the media, but the first path we took was a much better statistical fit even when we tried other explanations.

Profanity is kind of like a stepping stone. You don't go to a movie, hear a bad word, and then go and shoot somebody. But when youth both hear and then try profanity out for themselves it can start a downward slide toward more aggressive behavior.

Researchers from the University of Bonn have found brain activity patterns in heavy gamers that differed from those of non-gamers. The study's results have just been published in the scientific journal Biological Psychology.

Psychologists, epileptologists and neurologists from the University of Bonn studied the effect of shoot em up game images and other emotionally charged photos on the brain activity of heavy gamers. Compared to people who abstain from first-person shooters, they show clear differences in how emotions are controlled, reported lead author Dr. Christian Montag from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bonn.

21 subjects ranging in age from 20 to 30 years played first-person shooters for about 15 hours per week on average. During this study, they were shown a standardized catalog of photos that reliably trigger emotions in human brains, using video glasses. At the same time, the researchers recorded the responses in their brains using one of the brain scanners at the Life & Brain Center of the University of Bonn. The images included photos as they are used in the violent games, but also shots of accident and disaster victims. This mix of images allowed us to transport the subjects both to the fictitious first-person shooter world they are familiar with and to also trigger emotions via real images, explained Dr. Montag. This catalog of photos was also shown to a control group of 19 persons who had no experience with violent video games.

When the subjects regarded the real, negative pictures, there was greatly increased activity in their amygdalas. This region of the brain is strongly involved in processing negative emotions. Surprisingly, the amygdalas in the subjects as well as in the control group were similarly stimulated, reported Montag: This shows that both groups responded to the photos with similarly strong emotions.

But the left medial frontal lobes were clearly less activated in the users of violent games than in the control subjects. This is the brain structure humans use to control their fear or aggression. First-person shooters do not respond as strongly to the real, negative image material because they are used to it from their daily computer activities, Montag concluded: One might also say that they are more desensitized than the control group.

On the other hand, while processing the computer game images, the first-person shooters showed higher activity in brain regions associated with memory recall and working memory than the control group members. This indicates that the gamers put themselves into the video game due to the computer game images and were looking for a potential strategy to find a solution for the game status shown, said Dr. Montag.

One question raised while interpreting the results is whether the users showed altered brain activity due to the games, or whether they were more tolerant of violence from the start and as a consequence, preferred first-person shooter games. The researchers from the University of Bonn were able to suggest an answer to this question based on the fact that they took into account various personality traits such as fearfulness, aggressiveness, callousness or emotional stability. There were no differences between the subjects and the control group in this area, reported Dr. Montag: This is an indication that the violent games are the cause of the difference in information processing in the brain.

In the wake of Grand Theft Auto being mentioned in a murder trial, the Daily Mail seized upon a piece of research about computer gaming.

The Daily Mail reported:

How video games blur real life boundaries and prompt thoughts of violent solutions to players' problems

See  article from  dailymail.co.uk . By Jenny Hope

Some video game players are transferring their screen experiences into the real world - prompting thoughts of violent solutions to their problems, say researchers.

Fans of computers can become so immersed in their virtual environment they do things in the real world as if they were still playing.

The findings come after sailor Ryan Donovan was sentenced to 25 years in jail for shooting dead an officer on a nuclear sub to copy the violent video game Grand Theft Auto.

Researchers at Nottingham Trent University and Stockholm University have for the first time identified evidence of Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP), which results in some gamers integrating video experiences into their real lives. The study to be published in the next issue of the International Journal of Cyber Behaviour, Psychology and Learning.

The study involved 42 in-depth interviews with participants aged between 15 and 21 years old, all of whom were frequent video game players and had been recruited from gaming forums.

They thought in the same way as when they were gaming, with half of participants often looking to use something from a video game to resolve a real-life issue.

In some cases these thoughts were accompanied by reflexes, such as reaching to click a button on the controller when it wasn't in their hands, while on other occasions gamers visualised their thoughts in the form of game menus.

...

Violent solutions to real life conflicts appeared to be used by few of the players, at least in their imaginations says the study.

One 15-year-old gamer said: There (in the video game) you can get guns. This I want to do in real life, to get some guns, shoot down people. This I want to do sometimes with irritating people.

The study concluded: The close resemblance to real life scenarios in video games may have opened a 'Pandora's Box for some players.

...Read the full article

The UK's national health service has responded to this Daily Mail write up and added a much needed bit of perspective:

Video games blur reality , claims newspaper

From nhs.uk

The Daily Mail has today reported that video games blur real life boundaries and prompt thoughts of violent solutions to players' problems .

This headline is based on a small study exploring whether frequent video game players integrated elements of video game playing into their real lives - a theoretical process the researchers called game transfer phenomena (GTP). The study showed that most gamers experienced GTP, including experiencing brief involuntary impulses to perform actions as they would when playing a game. For example, they might try to click a button on their controller while it was not in their hand.

It is important to note that not all the players were affected by the games and the degree that people were affected varied significantly from person to person. Additionally, it is not clear from this study whether GTP was related to the game played or whether it related to the specific characteristics of individual game players. Many of the actions reported by participants were also unusual or novel, and do not provide evidence that games affect perception of behaviour. For example, one participant said that they like to pack their suitcase neatly like Tetris blocks.

Further studies will be needed to investigate whether GTP is a real, significant phenomenon and the potential link between GTP and a player's individual characteristics.

...

The Daily Mail's report covering this study tended to focus on the violent and negative aspects of game transfer phenomena (GTP) highlighted in the study. The Daily Mail presents GTP as a proven phenomenon with definite results, but the results of this interview-based study are debatable and GTP is still only a theory.

News coverage also linked the study results to a recent murder trial where video games were reportedly implicated. This angle seemed to be a confused addition to news coverage of the research, as it could suggest to readers that games were found to be the primary cause of the incident, or that they could cause ordinary people to consider murder.

Research from Brock University in Canada seems to indicate that playing highly competitive video games may lead to aggressive behavior faster than playing games with more violent content. Competitiveness, says a new study published by the American Psychological Association, may be the main video game characteristic that influences or causes aggression.

In a series of experiments lead by Paul J.C. Adachi, M.A., a PhD candidate at Brock University in Canada, video games were matched on competitiveness, difficulty, and pace of action. Researchers found that video game violence did not elevate aggressive behavior on its own. The more competitive games produced greater levels of aggressive behavior than less competitive games, no matter how much violent content was found in the games.

In one of the experiments, 42 college students played one of two video games, Conan or Fuel , for 12 minutes. Both games were even when it came to competitiveness, difficulty and pace of action, but differed in levels of violence. After participants finished playing the game, they were then told they were going to take part in a separate food tasting study. Participants had to make up a cup of hot sauce for a taster who they were told did not particularly like hot or spicy food. The participants could choose from one of four different hot sauces (from least hot to most hot) for the taster to drink. The authors found that there was no significant difference in the intensity and amount of the hot sauces prepared by the participants who played Conan and those who played Fuel. The authors concluded that video game violence alone was not sufficient to elevate aggressive behavior.

In the second experiment, 60 college students played one of four video games: Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe , Left 4 Dead 2 , Marble Blast Ultra , and Fuel . Afterward, the students completed the same hot sauce test from the first study. Electrocardiograms measured the participants' heart rates before and during video game play. On average, students who played the highly competitive games - Fuel and Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe - concocted what researchers called significantly more of a hotter sauce than participants who played Marble Blast Ultra and Left 4 Dead 2. They also had significantly higher heart rates.

Adachi concluded:

These findings suggest that the level of competitiveness in video games is an important factor in the relation between video games and aggressive behavior, with highly competitive games leading to greater elevations in aggression than less competitive games.

Psychological studies invariably find a positive relationship between violent video game play and aggression. However, these studies cannot account for either aggressive effects of alternative activities video game playing substitutes for or the possible selection of relatively violent people into playing violent video games. That is, they lack external validity.

We investigate the relationship between the prevalence of violent video games and violent crimes.

Our results are consistent with two opposing effects. First, they support the behavioral effects as in the psychological studies. Second, they suggest a larger voluntary incapacitation effect in which playing either violent or non-violent games decrease crimes.

Overall, violent video games lead to decreases in violent crime.

According to a group of researchers in England, games with goals such as football are more likely to make participants aggressive than anything encountered in Grand Theft Auto or Call Of Duty .

According to research conducted by Dr. Simon Goodson and Sarah Pearson of Huddersfield university, games with goals cause more of an aggressive reaction in participants than killing an animated character because sports is closer to real life.

Researchers measured the heart rates, respiration and brain activity of 40 male and female participants randomly selected to play violent Xbox 360 game or a football game. They found that when players killed someone in a game it caused little brain activity. But when participant's conceded a goal or foul in the sports game it caused a higher level of brain activity.

Dr. Goodson added that participants generally reacted with more agitation during the football game and that maybe violent games have been misrepresented as the worst thing a gamer can play.

Dr. Goodson is presenting his research this week at the British Psychological Society's annual conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

According to researchers at Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada), violent video games do not desensitize players to violent imagery. The study was lead by Holly Bowen and co-authored by psychology professor Julia Spaniol.

Researchers examined the impact of chronic exposure to violent video games on emotional memory and responses to negative stimuli.

Emotional long-term memory helps us avoid negative situations, Bowen said. This has significant implications for public health. For example, if you remember the negative experience of being involved in a bar fight, you will avoid future situations that may lead to an altercation.

Participants were shown 150 images representing three different stimuli: negative, positive and neutral scenes. One hour later, the students viewed those same images again (along with a new set of 150 distractor images) in random order. As each image was displayed, participants had to respond whether or not they had seen it before. Finally, at the end of the experiment, the students completed a self-assessment test regarding their state of emotional arousal.

The researchers believed going into the study that game players would prove to be less sensitive to the negative images and therefore show reduced memory for these materials. The results showed no difference in the memory of video game players and non-players. Exposure to video games were not associated with differences in self-reported arousal to emotional stimuli.

The findings indicate that long-term emotional memory is not affected by chronic exposure violent video games, said Bowen. Researchers caution that further study is needed to see if these results apply to all age groups and not just young adults.

New research by Dr. Christopher Ferguson from Texas A&M International University finds that depression in young people has more of a correlation to aggressive and violent behavior than gaming does - at least among Hispanics.

Ferguson recruited 302 (mostly) Hispanic youths between the ages of 10 - 14 years-old, from a small city on the border of Mexico. The population of this unnamed city was primarily of Hispanic dissent. Participants were interviewed at the start of the study and at the end of the study 12 months later.

He then looked at how much exposure the subjects had to violence in video games, television, and negative events in their lives. Negative events included neighborhood problems, bad relationships with adults, antisocial behavior, family attachment, delinquent peers, family interaction and communication, exposure to domestic violence, depressive symptoms, serious aggression, bullying, and delinquent behavior.

One year later, 7% reported being involved in at least one criminally violent act during the previous 12 months, with the common crime being physical assaults on other students or the use of force to take something away from someone else. 19% reported engaging in at least one nonviolent crime during the same period, such as shoplifting or theft on school property.

Ferguson found that symptoms of depressions were a strong predictor for youth aggression and rule breaking. Depression was especially influential in those who were identified as having preexisting antisocial personality traits. The research did not find that exposure to violence from video games or television at the start of the study was a good predictor of aggressive behavior in young people.

Dr. Furgeson's research will appear in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Repeated viewing of violent scenes in films, television or video games could make teenagers behave more aggressively, US research claims.

The National Institutes of Health study of 22 boys aged 14 to 17 found that showing dozens of violent clips appeared to blunt brain responses. Dr Jordan Grafman said it might make aggression feel more acceptable .

The US study, published in the journal Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience , involved 60 violent scenes from videos being collated, mostly involving street brawling and fist fights. The violence was ranked low , mild or moderate , and there were no extreme scenes.

The response of the boys as they watched the clips was measured in a number of ways. They were asked to rate whether they thought each clip was more or less aggressive than the one which preceded it, and were brain scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which shows in real time which areas of the brain are active.In addition, electrodes attached to the fingers detected increasing sweat - a sign of an emotional response.

The longer the boys watched videos, particularly the mild or moderate ones, the less they responded to the violence within them.

In particular, an area of the brain known as the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, thought to be involved in emotional processing, showed less activity to each clip as time went on.

Dr Grafman said: Exposure to the most violent videos inhibits emotional reactions to similar aggressive videos over time and implies that normal adolescents will feel fewer emotions over time as they are exposed to similar videos. The implications of this include the idea that continued exposure to violent videos will make an adolescent less sensitive to violence, more accepting of violence, and more likely to commit aggressive acts since the emotional component associated with aggression is reduced and normally acts as a brake on aggressive behaviour.

However, another academic said it was almost impossible to explain violence in these terms. Professor David Buckingham, the director of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, said that violence was a social problem with many contributing factors, not simply a matter of looking at how the brain worked: The suggestion is that, over a period of time, people can develop a kind of tolerance to these images - but another word for that is just boredom.

A new study into the effects of computer games has revealed that fast-paced action games turn us into faster and better decision-makers.

Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York conducted a series of tests to gauge whether regular bouts of high-speed gaming could help to improve our cognitive abilities.

The researchers tested dozens of 18- to 25-year-olds who were not ordinarily video-gamers, splitting them into two groups.

The first group were told to play adrenalin-packed action games such as Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament , in which participants dash around online arenas shooting each other. The second group were given The Sims 2 , a more sedate, strategy-based game that mimics the pace of everyday life.

After 50 hours of playing, both groups were given a series of tests to see whether they could make quicker decisions. Scientists discovered that those who had trained on the action games made decisions 25% faster than their counterparts. They also answered just as many questions correctly as their strategy game-playing peers.

It's not the case that the action game players are trigger-happy and less accurate – they are just as accurate and also faster, said Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive scientist at Rochester who has been testing how computer games affect the brain and eyes for much of the past 10 years. Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference.

This benefit, researchers suggest in a forthcoming edition of Current Biology , has repercussions in the real world, such as improving our ability to multitask, drive, read small print and keep track of friends in a crowd.

Decisions are never black and white, she said. The brain is always computing probabilities. As you drive, for instance, you may see a movement on your right, estimate whether you are on a collision course, and based on that probability make a binary decision: brake or don't brake.

Action-filled computer games – which force the brain to make a whole series of fast-paced decisions in a split second – appear to improve our ability to make those decisions quickly.

Shooting off a few rounds of nonsense sound bites

Based on article from  news.sky.com

But Vivienne Pattison, director of Mediawatch-UK, told Sky News the study could send out the wrong message about shoot 'em ups:

I dont dispute the findings, it is going to improve you reactions if you click something enough, of course it is, but I'm not just talking about mental reactions - these games dehumanise violence.

There have been other studies that link them to violence and you could get the same reactions from a driving game.

Young adults—male and female—who play violent video games long-term, handle stress better than non-playing adults and become less depressed and less hostile following a stressful task, according to a study by Texas A&M International University associate professor, Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson.

The article on the research appears in the European Psychologist 2010.

In this study, 103 young adults were given a frustration task and then randomized to play no game, a non-violent game, a violent game with good versus evil theme, or a violent game in which they played 'the bad guy.' The results suggest that violent games reduce depression and hostile feelings in players through mood management, Dr. Ferguson explained.

Whether violent video games cause aggression or violent crime has been a source of contention in public and academic circles. The results do not support a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior.

Ferguson said that the results of this study may help provide others with ways to come up with a mood-management activity that provides individuals with ways to tolerate or reduce stress: It probably won't come to a surprise to gamers that playing games may reduce stress, although others have been skeptical of this idea. This is the first study that explores this idea, however. It does seem that playing violent games may help reduce stress and make people less depressed and hostile.

In a special issue of the journal Review of General Psychology, published in June by the American Psychological Association, researchers looked at several studies that examined the potential uses of video games as a way to improve visual/spatial skills, as a health aid to help manage diabetes or pain and as a tool to complement psychotherapy. One study examined the negative effects of violent video games on some people.

Much of the attention to video game research has been negative, focusing on potential harm related to addiction, aggression and lowered school performance, said Christopher J. Ferguson, PhD, of Texas A&M International University and guest editor of the issue. Recent research has shown that as video games have become more popular, children in the United States and Europe are having fewer behavior problems, are less violent and score better on standardized tests. Violent video games have not created the generation of problem youth so often feared.

In contrast, one study in the special issue shows that video game violence can increase aggression in some individuals, depending on their personalities.

In his research, Patrick Markey, PhD, determined that a certain combination of personality traits can help predict which young people will be more adversely affected by violent video games. Previous research has shown us that personality traits like psychoticism and aggressiveness intensify the negative effects of violent video games and we wanted to find out why, said Markey.

Markey used the most popular psychological model of personality traits, called the Five-Factor Model, to examine these effects. The model scientifically classifies five personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Analysis of the model showed a perfect storm of traits for children who are most likely to become hostile after playing violent video games, according to Markey. Those traits are: high neuroticism (e.g., easily upset, angry, depressed, emotional, etc.), low agreeableness (e.g., little concern for others, indifferent to others feelings, cold, etc.) and low conscientiousness (e.g., break rules, don't keep promises, act without thinking, etc.).

Markey then created his own model, focusing on these three traits, and used it to help predict the effects of violent video games in a sample of 118 teenagers. Each participant played a violent or a non-violent video game and had his or her hostility levels assessed. The teenagers who were highly neurotic, less agreeable and less conscientious tended to be most adversely affected by violent video games, whereas participants who did not possess these personality characteristics were either unaffected or only slightly negatively affected by violent video games.

These results suggest that it is the simultaneous combination of these personality traits which yield a more powerful predictor of violent video games, said Markey. Those who are negatively affected have pre-existing dispositions, which make them susceptible to such violent media.

Violent video games are like peanut butter, said Ferguson. They are harmless for the vast majority of kids but are harmful to a small minority with pre-existing personality or mental health problems.

Inspired by a plotline from the 2003 movie Runaway Jury , University of Southern California researcher Kwan Min Lee, and associates, conducted research under the title Will the Experience of Playing a Violent Role in a Videogame Influence People's Judgments of Violent Crimes?

The inspiring scene from Runaway Jury involved the lawyer for a defendant accused of committing a violent shooting tried to have a hardcore video game player selected as a member of the jury. The lawyer carried the belief that a hardcore gamer would judge the shooter less negatively because of similar, though virtual, experiences.

52 undergrads were involved in the study—who had never played the game used in the experiment ( True Crime )—and were randomly assigned to either a game-playing group or a control group. The game-playing group was tasked with playing True Crime for 2 hours. Both groups were then asked to read two real-life crime cases committed by police officers and two by generic criminals, and then to answer a series of questions in which they judged the crime and the criminal.

It was reported that, people who played the violent game had more favorable judgment of the crimes and perpetrators than people who did not play the violent game in terms of their negative judgment of the perpetrators.

The researchers concluded that that even a few hours of game playing as a particular game character can significantly influence one's attitude towards real-life criminal behaviors conducted by an individual similar to the game character.

It was also theorized that perhaps the jury selection process should take into account both real and virtual experiences as it was shown that attitudes towards real criminals can be influenced while taking on a similar role in a videogame.

Games may not bad for you after all, according to a joint study conducted by the Department of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, and Leiden University in the Netherlands.

More precisely, first-person shooters are better at training you for the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and less effective at making you a killing machine.

DOOM'd to switch: superior cognitive flexibility in players of first person shooter games, a research paper published on Frontiers in Cognition focuses on the benefits of playing first-person shooters.

Thirty-four adults (17 video game players and 17 non-gamers) participated in the study, with video game players defined as those who have played video games at least four times a week for a minimum period of 6 months. All of the video game players had some experience with games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield , and Grand Theft Auto IV . Non-gamers were described as having little to no video game experience. All of the participants were recruited among student populations and through advertisements on internet forums catering to video game players.

While details of the study are pretty complex, the short story is that the video game players were able to rapidly react to fast moving visual and auditory stimuli, and to switch back and forth between different subtasks faster than the non-video game playing group. The study also conducted test to make sure that these results weren't based on age or I.Q. After eliminating those possibilities, researchers found that it had more to do with first-person shooter games than any other possible factors.

A new study conducted by a Wheaton College professor has concluded that people that play action and puzzle games are better able to think through complex problems.

Rolf Nelson, a professor of psychology, conducted the study and published his findings in the November edition of the journal Perception.

In the study, he had 20 students try to solve a spatial relation problem. The students were then given a puzzle game or action game to play. Once done with the game, the students were given the chance to finish the spatial relation problem again.

Results showed that puzzle players finished the task slower, but with more accuracy, while action players finished the task quicker but less accurately. Both finished quicker than if they had not played a game at all.

From the study abstract:

To understand the way in which video-game play affects subsequent perception and cognitive strategy, two experiments were performed in which participants played either a fast-action game or a puzzle-solving game. Before and after video-game play, participants performed a task in which both speed and accuracy were emphasized. In experiment 1 participants engaged in a location task in which they clicked a mouse on the spot where a target had appeared, and in experiment 2 they were asked to judge which of four shapes was most similar to a target shape. In both experiments, participants were much faster but less accurate after playing the action game, while they were slower but more accurate after playing the puzzle game. Results are discussed in terms of a taxonomy of video games by their cognitive and perceptual demands.

Education minister Mike Russell said the technology, often seen as a distraction, could motivate young people to develop skills.

Russell said the Nintendo DS console, for example, could lead to surprising educational benefits for young people, particularly its top-selling brain-training games.

He said: We need to embrace new technologies and tap into all the resources available to us to ensure that our young people develop successfully in a modern society within which computers are so important.

Educational computer games can be a great way of motivating young people to learn in a way that is relevant and enjoyable for them.

Computer games are often perceived as solely a distraction to learning. But alongside traditional learning aids, they can help make learning more engaging.

Parents and teachers across the country are starting to see the benefits they can have.

Dr David Miller of the University of Dundee has conducted studies into the effects of brain-training games on improving learning in partnership with government education body Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS).

Miller said it was clear many games had tremendous learning potential. The research focusing on a brain-training game showed it could improve pupil's basic computational skills. Children who used the game for 20 minutes each morning over a ten-week period demonstrated statistically significant gains in accuracy and speed of processing.

He said: Research is starting to point towards computer games providing some real and tangible benefits to young people. These can include faster processing of information, enhanced selection of relevant material and higher levels of engagement. Computer games are part of our culture and while we may have concerns about aspects of some popular games, many have huge potential for supporting learning.

University of Rochester researchers found that children who played video games were quick thinkers and had good hand-eye co-ordination.

Contrary to the widely held belief that video games are contributing to Britain's obesity crisis, a team of American researchers has found that there are benefits to sitting in front of a screen for hours on end.

Dr Matthew Dye said there were good points about playing video games even though many critics claim they distract children from more healthy outdoor pursuits: Avid players got faster not only on their game of choice, but on a variety of unrelated laboratory tests of reaction time .

Sceptics agree that gamers are fast but that they become less accurate as their speed of play increases. Gamers don't lose accuracy in the game or in lab tests as they get faster - this is a result of the gamer's improved visual cognition.

Dr Dye said video game fans did well on hand-eye co-ordination tests and comprehension tests: Playing video games enhances performance on mental rotation skills, visual and spatial memory, and tasks requiring divided attention.

Dr Dye said that parents and grandparents should play their children's computer games to improve their own memory and brain function: Training with video games may serve to reduce gender differences in visual and spatial processing, and thwart some of the cognitive declines that come with ageing .

Results of a study performed by researchers at Iowa State University have led them to believe that there is a relation between frequent videogame playing and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

Video Games and Cognitive Control was designed to quantify the effects of playing videogames on two types of cognitive activity—proactive and reactive. Proactive attention is described as a gearing up mechanism, or where a player can anticipate what is coming next, versus reactive attention, which is more of a knee-jerk response (a monster jumping out).

A visual task was used to test both attention types with brain waves and responses measured in both frequent videogame players and occasional players. Both groups were charged with identifying the color of a word when the color and word matched, such as 'RED' presented in red, or did not match, such as 'RED' presented in blue or green. This is also referred to as the Stroop task.

While reactive control was similar in both groups, frequent gamers (participants in this study who play four or more hours a day) had a propensity for exhibiting significantly diminished proactive attention.

From a press release: While admitting that the study did have a few limitations, the researchers hoped that our results may serve to constrain the claims of some scholars, game manufacturers, and journalists who have suggested that playing action video games 'improves attention.'

The study is being published in the October 2009 issue of Psychophysiology.

Did you know that playing violent multiplayer games will make you more aggressive against strangers than friends? That's the conclusion of a new study published in the latest issue of the Evolution and Human Behavior science journal.

The study, conducted by psychologists from the University of Missouri, observed 42 young men divided into 14 teams of three. The players played Unreal Tournament 2004 within their team and against other teams. When playing against teammates, the mode was Deathmatch. When playing against other teams, the mode was Onslaught. Before and after each match, the testosterone and cortisol levels of each player was tested.

According to the study's abstract from the journal's web site:

For 14 teams of three young men, salivary testosterone and cortisol were assessed twice before and twice after competing in within-group and between-group video games that simulated violent male-male competition. Men who contributed the most to their teams' between-group victory showed testosterone increases immediately after the competition, but only if this competition was played before the within-group tournament. High-scoring men on losing teams did not show this immediate effect, but they did show a delayed increase in testosterone. In contrast, high-ranking men tended to have lower testosterone and higher cortisol during within-group tournaments. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that men's competitive testosterone response varies across ingroup and outgroup competitions and is muted during the former. The testosterone response during the between-group competition also suggests that violent multiplayer video games may be appealing to young men because they simulate male-male coalitional competition.

The Researchers at the Mind Research Network found that playing Tetris for three months had increased efficiency and beefed up the amount of gray matter in the brains of a group of adolescent girls.

The results, which will be published in BMC Research Notes later this week, showed that focusing on a challenging visuospatial task such as a video game could not just increase brain activity but alter the structure of the brain as well by thickening the cortexes.

So, what benefit does a fatter, more efficient brain offer? According to one of the study's authors, Dr. Richard Haier, it may be a way to help combat the mental decline that occurs with age.

A report published in the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin maintains that playing pro-social games increases helping behavior by participants while playing violent games increases hurtful behavior.

GamePolitics has previously reported on the research, which combines the results from three separate studies conducted in the U.S., Japan and Singapore. But a press release issued today by the University of Michigan offers new insight about the methodologies used by the researchers involved.

UM's Brad Bushman said:

These studies show the same kind of impact on three different age groups from three very different cultures. In addition, the studies use different analytic approaches---correlational, longitudinal and experimental. The resulting triangulation of evidence provides the strongest possible proof that the findings are both valid and generalizable...

[The research] suggests there is an upward spiral of prosocial gaming and helpful behavior, in contrast to the downward spiral that occurs with violent video gaming and aggressive behavior...

Taken together, these findings make it clear that playing video games is not in itself good or bad for children. The type of content in the game has a bigger impact than the overall amount of time spent playing.

Perhaps the most interesting experiment involved 161 U.S. college students. From the press release:

After playing either a prosocial, violent, or neutral game, participants were asked to assign puzzles to a randomly selected partner. They could choose from puzzles that were easy, medium or hard to complete. Their partner could win $10 if they solved all the puzzles. Those who played a prosocial game were considerably more helpful than others, assigning more easy puzzles to their partners. And those who had played violent games were significantly more likely to assign the hardest puzzles.

In a guest lecture at Macquarie University, Sydney, Professor Anderson, Director of Centre of the Study of Violence at Iowa State University spoke of the risks of violent videogames.

Research was clear by 1975 that media violence caused aggressive behaviour, Prof. Anderson said: We know that short term exposure to violent media can lead to aggressive behaviour and aggressive thinking within five minutes of watching a violent film or playing a violent game, while long term exposure can lead to aggression into early adulthood.

To highlight this connection, Prof. Anderson examined the likelihood of violent videogames leading to aggressive behaviour by drawing on well-known examples of cause and effect. Such examples included the chances of regular consumption of aspirin leading to heart attacks, the chances of asbestos causing cancer, and the chances of condom use reducing the risk of contracting HIV. In all these examples, violent videogames proved to be a higher risk factor, going as far as being approximately three times more likely to happen than asbestos exposure leading to cancer.

On the scale of youth violence risk factors, violent videogames were more likely to increase aggression than substance abuse, poverty, and anti-social peers. Violent games are more likely to provoke aggressive thoughts in players.

Anderson was careful to point out that this did not necessarily mean that everyone who played violent videogames would begin committing violent acts. Rather, violent games made players more prepared to think aggressive thoughts.

He cited another study where college students were asked to play a pro-social, neutral, and violent game, after which each was tested to see how willing they were to help their peers solve puzzles. The study showed that those who played non-violent, pro-social games were more inclined to be helpful by choosing easier puzzles for their peers to complete, whereas those who had just played violent games chose difficult puzzles to impede on their peers' ability to complete the challenge.

While Anderson believes that this increase in aggressive behaviour is a cause for concern, he doesn't think that violent games are solely to be blamed for anti-social behaviour.

Extreme acts of violence always require multiple risk factors being present. You just don't ever have a school shooter, for example, who only has one risk factor. It just doesn't happen. There's usually four, five, six, seven risk factors, sometimes more. Media violence is one of those risk factors. he said.

Does that mean playing violent videogames is going to create a school shooter? No, not if there aren't any other risk factors. But in kids who have a lot of other risk factors, can it contribute to the likelihood of some sort of extreme violent behaviour occurring? Probably, it can. More so than other risk factors? We don't know. There's no data on it.

If you want to make blood-and-gore video games less appealing to minors, toss those restrictive age and violent-content warnings. The lure of something off-limits only increases demand, a new study says.

In the study, researchers tested 310 Dutch children ranging in age from 7 to 17. Participants read fictitious game descriptions and rated how much or how little they wanted to play each game. In every group, the more objectionable the content, the more kids clamoured for the controller— forbidden fruit, the researchers called the games.

The findings are published in the March issue of Pediatrics.

While research has found that ratings increase the attraction to raunchy TV shows and movies, the hypothesis had never been tested with video games, reported two of the study's authors, Brad Bushman of the University of Michigan and Elly Konijn of VU University Amsterdam.

They suggest that youth should not be allowed to buy their own games, that parents and physicians be aware of risk factors (such as a drop in grades) and that policy-makers rethink the classifications (such as M, appropriate for those 17 and older), which will only make the games "unspeakably desirable."

Volunteers who played a simple cycling game learned to favour one team's jersey and avoid another's. Days later, most subjects subconsciously avoided the same jersey in a real-world test.

As video games become more immersive and realistic, all involved ought to realise the potential, says Paul Fletcher, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University, UK, who led the study

I don't think this is evidence that video games are bad, says Fletcher, a former gamer: We just need to be aware that associations formed within the game transfer to the real world – for good or bad.

Fletcher and several colleagues recruited 22 volunteer subjects and told them they were testing an experimental sports drink delivery system. Volunteer played a bicycling game on a laptop with two straws attached to their mouths.

If cyclists from their same team – as indicated by a jersey design – passed by, participants received a slurp of their favourite juice. However, if a cyclist from the rival team passed the participant, he or she got a swig of salty tea.

Three days later, the same volunteers came back for a follow-up brain scan and a surprise test. Before the scan, Fletcher and his colleagues asked each subject to sit in a waiting room with two chairs, both with small towels dangling on one arm. One seat corresponded to the insignia of the juice-giving jersey, the other to the symbol for salty tea.

Three-quarters of the subjects sat in the chair that reminded them of juice, though most participants said they did not notice the towel design.

Our research suggests whatever you've learned in the computer game does have an effect on how you behave toward the stimulus in the real world, Fletcher says.

A researcher at Texas A&M International University has concluded that there is no significant relationship between school shootings and playing violent video games.

Writing for the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, Prof. Christopher Ferguson criticizes the methodology used in earlier research linking games to violence and aggression. He also points out that no evidence of violent game play was found in recent high-profile incidents such as the Virginia Tech massacre, the Utah Trolley Stop mall shooting and the February, 2008 shooting on the campus of Northern Illinois University.

Ferguson examines the notion of moral panic as it relates to the supposed relationship between violent video games and school shootings:

Moral panics may emerge from culture wars occurring in a society... politicians, news media and social scientists, arguably [have] motives for promoting hysterical beliefs about media violence, and video games specifically. Actual causes of violent crime, such as family environment, genetics, poverty, and inequality, are oftentimes difficult, controversial, and intractable problems. By contrast, video games present something of a straw man by which politicians can create an appearance of taking action against crime...

Ferguson, who cites GamePolitics among his numerous sources, notes that many video game critics are unfamiliar with the medium:

It has been the observation of this author, for instance, that the majority of individuals critical of video games are above the age of 35 (many are elderly) and oftentimes admit to not having directly experienced the games. Some commentators make claims betraying their unfamiliarity, such as that games like Grant Theft Auto ‘award points’ for antisocial behaviour... despite that few games award points for anything anymore, instead focusing on stories.

Ferguson also points out what he sees as design flaws in a number of studies relating to video games and aggression. He also examines school shooting research conducted by the FBI and Secret Service before concluding:

School shootings, although exceedingly rare, are an important issue worthy of serious consideration. However, for our understanding of this phenomenon to progress, we must move past the moral panic on video games and other media and take a hard look at the real causes of serious aggression and violence...

the wealth of evidence... fails to establish a link between violent video games and violent crimes, including school shootings. The link has not merely been unproven; I argue that the wealth of available data simply weighs against any causal relationship.

While video games are often slammed over violent content, a new study suggests that it is the challenge presented by a game rather than graphic violence which attracts players.

The research, which appears in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , was conducted at the University of Rochester.

A press release quotes Andrew Przybylski, the study's lead author: For the vast majority of players, even those who regularly play and enjoy violent games, violence was not a plus. Violent content was only preferred by a small subgroup of people that generally report being more aggressive.

Immersyve president Scott Rigby commented on potential ramifications for the video game industry: Much of the debate about game violence has pitted the assumed commercial value of violence against social concern about the harm it may cause. Our study shows that the violence may not be the real value component, freeing developers to design away from violence while at the same time broadening their market.

Researchers incorporated the popular Half-Life 2 and House of the Dead III into their study, using both high and low gore scenarios.

German nutters and politicians have just held a conference on violent computer games:

Douglas Gentile was, by far, the most moderate of the panel. He called to get rid of the simplistic idea that video games are either good or bad. And although he criticized ESRB, he opposed to a ban of the most violent games, asking for more media literacy instead.

Werner Hopf, who presented a longitudinal study claiming that violent video games is the most important risk factor in violent criminality rejected this idea, claiming that it was a trick of video game industry. Not only did he call for a ban of extremely violent computer games, but he also called for the suppression of USK (German rating systems) because according to him it's too close to the industry. He asked for its replacement by a more independent rating organization.

[Hopf's study found that (1) playing violent electronic games is the strongest risk factor of violent criminality and (2) both media-stimulated and real experiences of aggressive emotions associated with the motive of revenge are core risk factors of violence in school and violent criminality. The results of our study show that the more frequently children view horror and violence films during childhood and the more frequently they play violent electronic games at the beginning of adolescence the higher will these students' violence and delinquency be at the age of 14].

USK was also criticized by researchers from the KFN, the Criminology Institute lead by Christian Pfeiffer, one of the most vocal German opponents against killer games . Regine Pfeiffer, Christian's sister, even attacked Electronic Arts violently, calling it a pig company. [According to the report, she was frustrated in her efforts to sue EA over a violent game (Dead Space?) because the publisher is not headquartered in Germany].
Finally, journalist Rainer Fromm reiterated his objections against sadistic and militaristic games. But he also said that he considered video games per se as a great hobby, even telling that he plays them regularly as well as his children. He also reiterated his very positive opinion of eSports.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann was happy about the success of this conference, and it confirmed him in his view that some violent games such as GTA 4 or The Godfather : Don Edition must be banned...

New research from Sweden indicates that violent video games affect boys' heart rate and sleep, according to Science Daily.

The study, conducted by researchers from Stockholm University, Uppsala University and Karolinska Institute, tracked 12-15-year-old boys who were asked to play two different games:

The heart rate variability was affected to a higher degree when the boys were playing games focusing on violence compared with games without violent features. Differences in heart rate variability were registered both while the boys were playing the games and when they were sleeping that night. The boys themselves did not feel that they had slept poorly after having played violent games.

The results show that the autonomous nerve system, and thereby central physiological systems in the body, can be affected when you play violent games without your being aware of it. It is too early to draw conclusions about what the long-term significance of this sort of influence might be. What is important about this study is that the researchers have found a way, on the one hand, to study what happens physiologically when you play video or computer games and, on the other hand, to discern the effects of various types of games.

The researchers hope that their work may also have some implications for the study of so-called game addiction.

Children and teenagers who play violent video games show increased physical aggression months afterward, according to new research.

The research, published today in the journal Pediatrics , brings together three studies, one from the United States and two from Japan, examining the content of games, how often they are played and aggressive behaviors later in a school year.

The U.S. research looked at the effects of violent video games over time, said lead author Craig A. Anderson, a psychology professor at Iowa State University and director of its Center for the Study of Violence.

Anderson said the collaboration with Japanese researchers was particularly telling because video games are popular there and crime and aggression are less prevalent. Some gamers have cited Japan's example as evidence that violent games are not harmful.

Yet the studies produced similar findings in both countries, Anderson said. When you find consistent effects across two very different cultures, you're looking at a pretty powerful phenomenon. One can no longer claim this is somehow a uniquely American phenomenon. This is a general phenomenon that occurs across cultures.

The study in the United States showed an increased likelihood of getting into a fight at school or being identified by a teacher or peer as being physically aggressive five to six months later in the same school year. It focused on 364 children ages 9 to 12 in Minnesota and was first included in a 2007 book, Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents.

Japanese researchers studied more than 1,200 Japanese youths ages 12 to 18. In all three studies, researchers accounted for gender and previous aggressiveness.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which publishes the journal in which the study appears this month, is in the process of revising its recommendations on media violence, and expects to issue a new statement in four to six months, a spokeswoman said. The academy now recognizes violence in media as a significant health risk to children and adolescents and recommends limiting screen time including television, computers and video games to one to two hours a day.

Refuted

Based on article from gamepolitics.com

In a letter to Pediatrics , Christopher Ferguson, a researcher at Texas A&M International University, has called the Anderson study into question. Ferguson claims that the research contains numerous flaws and disputes its meaningfulness. Ferguson writes:

In the literature review the authors suggest that research on video game violence is consistent when this is hardly the case. The authors here simply ignore a wide body of research which conflicts with their views...

The authors fail to control for relevant "third" variables that could easily explain the weak correlations that they find. Family violence exposure for instance, peer group influences, certainly genetic influences on aggressive behavior are just a few relevant variables that ought either be controlled or at minimum acknowledged as alternate causal agents for (very small) link between video games and aggression...

Lastly the authors link their results to youth violence in ways that are misleading and irresponsible. The authors do not measure youth violence in their study. The [research tool used] is not a violence measure, nor does it even measure pathological aggression. Rather this measure asks for hypothetical responses to potential aggressive situations, not actual aggressive behaviors.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released the results of the first-ever US, publicly available look at youth and video games.

Teens, Video Games & Civics examines how and why games are played and details the relationship that gaming has to social and civic engagement among teens in the United States.

In gathering their data, Pew conducted phone interviews with 12-17-year olds along with a parent. The results of the 75-page report are a fascinating glimpse into how video games fit into the lives of teens. Major conclusions include:

• Almost all teens play games
• 90% of parents say they always or sometimes know what games their children play.
• 72% say they always or sometimes check the ratings before their children are allowed to play a game.
• Parents of teens who play games are generally neutral on the effect of games on their children, with nearly two-thirds believing that games have no impact one way or the other on their offspring.
• 62% of parents of gamers say video games have no effect on their child one way or the other.
• 19% of parents of gamers say video games have a positive influence on their child
• 13% of parents of gamers say video games have a negative influence on their child.
• 5% of parents of gamers say gaming has some negative influence/some positive influence, but it depends on the game.

Civic engagement was one of the main focal points of the study. Games, however, seemed to have a mostly neutral effect in this area, with much depending on the civic-mindedness of individual gamers:

Does playing violent video games make players aggressive? It is a question that has taxed researchers, sociologists, and regulators ever since the first console was plugged into a TV and the first shots fired in a shoot 'em up game.

Writing May 14 in the International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry, Patrick Kierkegaard of the University of Essex, England, suggests that there is scant scientific evidence that video games are anything but harmless and that they do not lead to real world aggression. Moreover, his research shows that previous work is biased towards the opposite conclusion.

Kierkegaard points out that violent games are growing more realistic with each passing year and most relish their plots of violence, aggression and gender bias. But, he asks, Is there any scientific evidence to support the claims that violent games contribute to aggressive and violent behaviour?

Media scare stories about gamers obsessed with violent games and many research reports that claim to back up the idea that virtual violence breeds real violence would seem to suggest so. However, Kierkegaard has studied a range of such research papers several of which have concluded since the early 1980s that video games can lead to juvenile delinquency, fighting at school and during free play periods and violent criminal behaviour such as assault and robbery.

However, Kierkegaard explains, there is no obvious link between real-world violence statistics and the advent of video games. If anything, the effect seems to be the exact opposite and one might argue that video game usage has reduced real violence. Despite several high profile incidents in US academic institutions, Violent crime, particularly among the young, has decreased dramatically since the early 1990s, says Kierkegaard: while video games have steadily increased in popularity and use. For example, in 2005, there were 1,360,088 violent crimes reported in the USA compared with 1,423,677 the year before. With millions of sales of violent games, the world should be seeing an epidemic of violence, instead, violence has declined.

Research is inconclusive, emphasises Kierkegaard. It is possible that certain types of video game could affect emotions, views, behaviour, and attitudes, however, so can books, which can lead to violent behaviour on those already predisposed to violence. The inherent biases in many of the research studies examined by Kierkegaard point to a need for a more detailed study of video games and their psychological effects.

A new study in the UK has found that playing online violent games actually reduces anger and relaxes gamers.

While some anti-gaming activists would love nothing more than to find new research that definitively links real life violence with violence in video games, one recent study in Britain found that playing violent video games online actually has a tendency to make people less angry.

Miss Jane Barnett and her colleagues at Middlesex University are presented their results at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference in Dublin.

For the study, 292 male and female World of Warcraft players, aged between 12 and 83, were given a questionnaire on anger, aggression and personality. The participants then played the game for two hours and then completed the survey yet again. Ultimately, the results showed that the gamers were more likely to feel calm or tired after playing – but there were differences depending on sex, age and personality.

There were actually higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game as opposed to experiencing anger but this did very much depend on personality type. This will help us to develop a emotion and gaming questionnaire to help distinguish the type of gamer who is likely to transfer their online aggression into everyday life, explained Barnett.

People who are addicted to playing computer games show some of the same personality traits as people with Asperger's syndrome.

This is the conclusion of Dr John Charlton of the University of Bolton and Ian Danforth of Whitman College, USA. Their results were presented at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference in Dublin,

The researchers questioned 391 computer game players, 86% of whom were male. They considered relationships between addiction, 'high engagement' and personality.

They found that the closer the players got to addiction the more likely they were to display negative personality traits. And that as players showed more signs of addiction they were increasingly characterised by three personality traits that would normally be associated with Asperger's, a variety of high functioning autism. These were neuroticism, and lack of extraversion and agreeableness.

The researchers believe that these people are not classifiable as having Aspergers syndrome but share some of the same characteristics because they find it easier to empathise with computer systems than other people.

Dr Charlton said: 'The thinking in the field is that there is a scale along which people, even those considered to be 'normal', can be placed upon. And that people such as engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists are nearer to the non-empathising, systemising, end of the spectrum, with people with Asperger's syndrome even further along again.

Our research supports the idea that people who are heavily involved in game playing may be nearer to autistic spectrum disorders than people who have no interest in gaming.

Update: Poor Communications

8th April 2008

Dr John Charlton, a psychologist from the University of Bolton, has clarified that gaming does not cause Asperger Syndrome. Dr Charlton pointed out that some media outlets have been misinterpreting his research into video game addiction, which noted that some addicted gamers exhibit characteristics similar to those of people with Asperger Syndrome.

In no way can it be said that Asperger's can be caused by game playing (Asperger's is thought to have a biological basis) , SPOnG was told.

DA new study by a team of researchers from Helsinki, Finland has made the news lately due to its tentative answer.

The team's surprising findings: Video game players from its test group were angered and anxious after shooting their enemies, while their own deaths elicited a response of joy.

The study: The Psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic Emotional Responses to Violent Video Game Events recorded the psychophysiological responses of 36 young adults while playing James Bond 007: NightFire .

Previous studies have postulated that pairing violent actions with positive rewards is a recipe for desensitization. Though the Helsinki researchers expected their subjects to enjoy the act of killing, the subjects' responses were just the opposite.

The Bond researchers tentatively concluded that their results, which showed a negative response to the death of an enemy, lend little credence to the idea that video games desensitize players to violence: From this perspective, the fact that wounding or killing the opponent elicited negative, not positive, emotional responses might be reassuring .

With that hypothesis in mind, the team synced recorded game video with physiological data gathered from the players. In some cases, data from a non-violent event in Super Monkey Ball 2 , picking a banana, was used as a comparison to the violent Bond game.

The data showed that not only do players react negatively to the deaths of opponents, but they also react positively to the death or wounding of their own character. However, rather than concluding that video game players are sadistic individuals, the team is guessing that players are simply relieved from the tension of playing.

Though the brief relief from combat may explain the positive response to a player's own death, an enemy death is also followed by a reprieve from combat, making the negative response all the more interesting.

The study also showed that even after multiple play sessions, users still responded to the events in much the same way.

There was no evidence for desensitization of emotional responses as a function of repeated exposures to violent game events, concluded the study.

People who spend too much time playing video games, especially violent video games, may risk damaging brain functions and affect their learning and emotional control, according to findings of a study.

Chou Yuan-hua, a doctor in the Department of Psychiatry of Taipei Veterans General Hospital, enlisted 30 youngsters, all aged 25, as research subjects.

They were given physical examinations to monitor changes in blood circulation in their brains before and after each played a video game for 30 minutes.

The study found that the act of playing video games obviously causes a decreased blood flow in the brain, and that the effect is even more pronounced in those playing violent video games.

Noting that the study focused on subjects who played video games for only 30 minutes, Chou said many youngsters spend far more time on video games each day, unaware that doing so on a long term basis could damage the frontal lobe of the brain, as well as the anterior cingulate gyrus.

He explained that the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, located at the front of the brain, is associated with thinking, speaking, decision-making and impulse control, while the anterior cingulate gyrus, located in the medial wall of the frontal lobe, modulates internal emotional responses.

Although no conclusions as yet have been drawn regarding what might happen if blood flow to these brain areas is diminished frequently, it is already known that frontal lobe damage can leave a person emotionally adrift, opening him or her up to odd mood changes and variations in social behavior and personality.

Chou added that clinical experiences have proven that patients with schizophrenia or depression have significantly lower blood flows in their frontal lobes and anterior cingulate gyruses.

Violent Video Games as Exemplary Teachers:
A Conceptual Analysis. By

• Douglas A. Gentile, Institute of Science and Society Iowa State University National Institute on Media and the Family
• J. Ronald Gentile, University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Abstract

This article presents conceptual and empirical analyses of several of the “best practices” of learning and instruction, and demonstrates how violent video games use them effectively to motivate learners to persevere in acquiring and mastering a number of skills, to navigate through complex problems and changing environments, and to experiment with different identities until success is achieved.

These educational principles allow for the generation of several testable hypotheses, two of which are tested with samples of 430 elementary school children (mean age 10 years), 607 young adolescents (mean age 14 years), and 1,441 older adolescents (mean age 19 years). Participants were surveyed about their video game habits and their aggressive cognitions and behaviours.

The first hypothesis is based on the principle that curricula that teach the same underlying concepts across contexts should have the highest transfer. Therefore, students who play multiple violent video games should be more likely to learn aggressive cognitions and behaviours than those who play fewer.

The second hypothesis is based on the principle that long-term learning is improved if practice is distributed more across time. Therefore, students who play violent video games more frequently across time should be more likely to learn aggressive cognitions and behaviours than those who play the same types of games for equivalent amounts of time but less frequently.

Both hypotheses were supported. We conclude by describing what educators can learn from the successful instructional and curriculum design features of video games.