Children ‘gamers’ have better cognitive performance, says study

Parents are often concerned about the negative impacts of video games on their children, from mental health to social issues and lack of exercise, but a large study published Monday in the Jama Network Open indicates there are associated cognitive benefits. to this popular pastime.

Lead author Bader Chaarani, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, and his colleagues analyzed data from the extensive ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, funded by the country’s National Institutes of Health.

The researchers focused on the study’s responses, cognitive test results and brain scans of nearly 2,000 children ages 8 to 9 divided into two groups: those who never played video games and those who played for three hours a day or more.

Each group was evaluated in two tasks. The first involved seeing arrows pointing right or left and asking the children to press the direction of each arrow as quickly as they could. In the second task, people’s faces were shown and asked if an image displayed later matched or not, in order to test their working memory.

After using statistical methods to control for variables that could skew the results, such as parental income, IQ, and mental health symptoms, the team found that gamers performed better on both tasks.

As the children performed the tests, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The brains of those who played video games showed more activity in regions associated with attention and memory.

“The findings are consistent that video games improve cognitive skills involving response inhibition and working memory,” the authors concluded.

Among the study’s key points, the researchers highlighted that “these findings suggest that video games may be associated with improved cognitive skills.”

Continuation of the study

At the moment, it is not possible to know if a better cognitive performance drives him to play more, or if it is its result, commented Bader Chaarani, who told AFP that the topic appealed to him because he is a regular player and an expert in neuroimaging.

The researchers hope to have a clearer answer as the study proceeds and the same children are screened again when they are older. This will also help rule out other potential factors at play, such as the children’s home environment, exercise, and sleep quality.

Future studies may benefit from knowing what kind of video games children were playing, although by age 10 they are leaning towards action games such as Fortnite or Assassin’s Creed.

“Of course, excessive screen time is bad for overall mental health and physical activity,” Chaarani pointed out. But the study results showed that video games can be a better use of screens than just watching YouTube videos, which has no identifiable cognitive effects.