A University of Vermont study shows cognitive performance in children who play video games for three or more hours per day may be better than kids who do not.
This study analyzed data from the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development, or “ABCD,” Study. The study is the largest long-term study of brain development in child health in the U.S. It is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and other entities of the National Institutes of Health.
There are only 21 sites participating in the research, and the University of Vermont is one of them.
“There’s a lot of mixed results in the literature of video gaming and how it is associated. The majority say that it is associated with negative mental health outcomes like depression, anxiety and aggressive behavior. Here we are not seeing this,” said Bader Chaarani, Ph.D.
The specific study involved 2,000 kids ranging from 9 to 10 years old. The study found that the kids who play video games for three or more hours per day performed better on cognitive skill tests involving impulse control and working memory when compared to children who never played video games.
“We’re finding superior neurocognition, especially specific to impulse control and working memory, in those who play three hours or more of video games per day,” said Chaarani. “We are also seeing that this is linked to brain activation change in areas of the brain that are related to vision, attention and memory processing, which is kind of cool.”
Only a handful of neuroimaging studies have addressed associations between cognitive behavior and video gaming. The scientists at UVM are filling the gap by analyzing data obtained when children entered the large-scale, national, ABCD study.
“We need more of this because there are so many different facets of video gaming and screen use that we don’t know the details about yet and we need to do more. And we need to understand more. Without those details it's hard to put into context all of the results of the study,” said pediatrician and pediatric researcher at UVM Leigh-Anne Cioffredi.
More information on the mental effects of certain screen time can help families and medical professionals in the future depict what is appropriate for certain kids.
“Dr. Chaarani’s study really promotes the continued investigation into the different types of video gaming that are out there to better understand the mechanisms, because there absolutely might be a benefit of some of this cognitive training that happens when you participate in video games,” said Cioffredi.
UVM’s research team will continue to follow the children in the study to see how their cognitive development changes from teenagers to young adults.
0 Comments