Violence is seen everywhere around us and it has become a very prevalent issue in today’s society. We see it on the news, on social media, in YouTube videos and even in video games. Violence can be portrayed in a playful way such as play fighting with your friends and siblings and it can also be shown in a more graphic way such as war in video games. With the world around us growing into a more technology-based society, we are bound to come across some form of violence whether it be on a TV show we watch or on the video games that our siblings or kids play.
On April 21st, Laura Stockdale presented her research which was published in the research article called, “Cool, callous and in control: superior inhibitory control in frequent players of video games with violent content”. The research of Laura Stockdale and her colleagues focused on looking at frequent and infrequent video game players in which they looked at response inhibition in context to emotion (Stockdale). From her previous research she had learned that frequent video game players had differences in their cognitive function and in their emotions compared to infrequent video game players. To build off of their previous findings they conducted their new research by having their participants do a self-report that measures their empathy and used electroencephalography to measure their implicit attention to emotions. Their research showed that frequent video game players had low levels of empathy which was shown by the reduced P100 amplitude and they had reduced N200/P300 amplitude when they measured their response inhibition. Their research concluded that frequent expose to violent video games would make these individuals more aggressive and less empathetic.
Furthermore, In the article, “Action games expand the brain’s cognitive abilities, study suggests” by the researchers from the University of Geneva looked at the impact of cognition from action video games. They studied 8,970 individuals from the ages of 6 to 40 whom of which played action games and also didn’t play games at all. Their study was done in two meta analyses and included tests to measure cognition such as spatial attention and managing multiple tasks at once. They found that action game players had better cognition compared to the non-video game players. While they performed their research, they realized that the first meta-analysis didn’t answer the question they were aiming to answer. They wanted to know if playing action video games helped develop better cognitive skills or if the players have certain cognitive skills which make them good at playing action games. In order to answer this, they performed a second meta-analysis in which they divided up 2,883 people into two groups: one group played action games and the others played control games. Their results showed that the individuals playing the action games had increased cognition compared to the individuals playing the control games.
Both articles aimed at looking at the effects that video games had on video game players. One study aimed at the behavioral aspect and the other was aimed at the cognitive aspect, but both show us that prolonged video game play, specifically violent video games can have positive and negative effects on an individual. Although cognitive skills can be developed due to the plasticity of the brain, violent behavior can also be obtained because the video game player is constantly watching violent behavior which they can end up possessing.
Stockdale, Laura, et al. “Cool, callous and in control: Superior Inhibitory Control in Frequent
Players of Video Games with Violent Content.” Social Cognitive and Affective
Neuroscience, vol.12, no. 12, 2017, pp. 1869-1880., doi:10.1093/scan/nsx115.
Université de Genève. "Action games expand the brain's cognitive abilities, study suggests."
ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 December 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171212102158.htm>.
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