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PubMed2000

Prevalence of video games among Thai children: impact evaluation.

The present study was performed in order to determine prevalence and favored types of video games among altogether 679 primary and secondary school children in Thailand. To that end, the authors distributed questionnaires comprising detailed questions as to demographic data, playing frequency, available location and preferred type of video games among the parents of the children and adolescents to be investigated. Consistent with the literature, our results showed an early onset of video game playing (7.6 years), a higher prevalence among boys compared with girls, and a predilection for games invoking some aggressive behavior. In conclusion, although health hazards created by video game playing have remained beyond proof we still recommend parents and teachers to play a more active part as to the choice of games and the time spent playing.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Seizures during video-game play and other common leisure pursuits in known epilepsy patients without visual sensitivity.

PURPOSE: Some individuals who are negative to flash/pattern sensitivity have been reported to experience seizures while exposed to video games. This study seeks to examine systematically whether exposure to video-game material is a risk factor for seizures in patients with chronic epilepsy without visual sensitivity. METHODS: Two hundred and twelve chronic epilepsy patients participated in the study. All were negative to rigorous flash and pattern sensitivity testing. They were randomly allocated to a video game-playing session or to a period of leisure (involving reading, physical exercise, puzzles, etc.) and then alternated between these activities for a fixed total of eight 45-min periods while undergoing video-EEG monitoring. The study ceased if the participant experienced a clinical seizure. RESULTS: Twenty-five of 212 subjects experienced a seizure while participating in the study. Thirteen seizures occurred during periods of video-game play, and 12 during alternative leisure. CONCLUSIONS: We have not identified a greater risk of seizures in patients with (not visually sensitive) epilepsy during video-game play compared with other common leisure pursuits. Furthermore, we exposed a large population (212 patients) mostly with severe epilepsy, mainly drug reduced and some sleep deprived, to prolonged video game-playing without observing a significant excess number of seizures. This finding provides strong support for the hypothesis that seizures during video game play in the >95% of the epilepsy population without visual sensitivity are most likely to represent a chance occurrence, although, as always, each individual should be carefully assessed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Metabolic and physiologic responses to video game play in 7- to 10-year-old boys.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the metabolic, physiologic, and hemostatic responses to action video game play in a group of young boys. DESIGN: Comparison study. SETTING: Laboratory of Clinical and Applied Physiology, University of Miami. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-one boys aged 7 to 10 years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Blood pressure monitored before and during game play and blood glucose and lactate levels measured before and immediately after game play. Measurements were continuously recorded throughout game play. Dependent t tests were used to compare measurements recorded at baseline and during or after game play. Effect sizes using the Cohen d were examined for comparisons. RESULTS: Significant increases from baseline were found for heart rate (18.8%; P<.001), systolic (22.3%; P<.001) and diastolic (5.8%; P = .006) blood pressure, ventilation (51.9%; P<.001), respiratory rate (54.8%; P<.001), oxygen consumption (49.0%; P<.001), and energy expenditure (52.9%; P<.001). Effect sizes for these comparisons were medium or large. No significant changes were found from baseline to after video game play for lactate (18.2% increase; P = .07) and glucose (0.9% decrease; P = .59) levels. CONCLUSIONS: Video game play results in significant increases in various metabolic and physiologic variables in young children. Thus, it should not be combined with television viewing for the evaluation of sedentary activities. The magnitude of change, however, was lower than that observed during standard physical exercise and below national health recommendations. As such, video game play should not be considered a substitute for regular physical activities that significantly stress the metabolic pathways required for the promotion of cardiovascular conditioning.

Biomarkers↗
PubMed2004

An update on the effects of playing violent video games.

This article presents a brief overview of existing research on the effects of exposure to violent video games. An updated meta-analysis reveals that exposure to violent video games is significantly linked to increases in aggressive behaviour, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, and cardiovascular arousal, and to decreases in helping behaviour. Experimental studies reveal this linkage to be causal. Correlational studies reveal a linkage to serious, real-world types of aggression. Methodologically weaker studies yielded smaller effect sizes than methodologically stronger studies, suggesting that previous meta-analytic studies of violent video games underestimate the true magnitude of observed deleterious effects on behaviour, cognition, and affect.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Linking obesity and activity level with children's television and video game use.

This study examined the links between childhood obesity, activity participation and television and video game use in a nationally representative sample of children (N = 2831) ages 1-12 using age-normed body mass index (BMI) ratings. Results indicated that while television use was not related to children's weight status, video game use was. Children with higher weight status played moderate amounts of electronic games, while children with lower weight status played either very little or a lot of electronic games. Interaction analyses revealed that this curvilinear relationship applied to children under age 8 and that girls, but not boys, with higher weight status played more video games. Children ages 9-12 with lower weight status used the computer (non-game) for moderate amounts of time, while those with higher weight status used the computer either very little or a lot. This was also true for the relationship between print use and weight status for children of all ages. Results also indicated that children with higher weight status spent more time in sedentary activities than those with lower weight status.

Humans↗
PubMed1999

Video-game epilepsy: a European study.

With the introduction of Nintendo video-games on a large scale, reports of children having seizures while playing suggested a possible specific, provocative factor. Although 50% of the photosensitive patients are also sensitive to a 50-Hz television, nonphotosensitive patients with a history of video-game seizures were described as well. The question arises whether this is a mere coincidence, provoked by fatigue and stress, is related to the reaction to the television screen itself, or depends on the movement and color of the pictures of this specific game. A European study was performed in four countries and five sites. All patients were selected because of a history of television, video- or computer-game seizures, with a history of sun-light-, discotheque-, or black and white pattern-evoked seizures, or were already known to be sensitive to intermittent photic stimulation. A total of 387 patients were investigated; 220 (75%) were female and 214 (55%) of those were < 18 years of age. After a routine examination, intermittent photic, pattern, and television stimulation were performed in a standardized way. The patients were investigated with Super Mario World and a standard relatively nonprovocative TV program, both on a 50- and 100-Hz television. Regardless of the distance, Super Mario World proved to be more provocative than the standard program (Wilcoxon, p < 0.05). Eighty-five percent showed epileptiform discharges evoked by intermittent photic stimulation. Forty-five percent of patients were 50-Hz television sensitive and 26% were 100-Hz television sensitive. Pattern sensitivity was found in 28% of patients. The patients, referred because of a television, video- or computer-game seizure, were significantly more sensitive to pattern and to the 50-Hz television (chi square, p < 0.001). More patients are sensitive when playing Super Mario, compared with the standard program (Wilcoxon, p = 0.001) and more sensitive with playing versus viewing (p = 0.016). Of the patients who were referred because of seizures in front of the television, or evoked by a video- or computer game, 14% proved not to be photosensitive. Although no difference in age or use of medication was found, twice as many men were found in this nonphotosensitive group.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Children's exposure to magnetic fields produced by U.S. television sets used for viewing programs and playing video games.

Two epidemiologic studies have reported increased risk of childhood leukemia associated with the length of time children watched television (TV) programs or played video games connected to TV sets. To evaluate magnetic field exposures resulting from these activities, the static, ELF, and VLF magnetic fields produced by 72 TV sets used by children to watch TV programs and 34 TV sets used to play video games were characterized in a field study conducted in Washington DC and its Maryland suburbs. The resulting TV-specific magnetic field data were combined with information collected through questionnaires to estimate the magnetic field exposure levels associated with TV watching and video game playing. The geometric means of the ELF and VLF exposure levels so calculated were 0.0091 and 0.0016 microT, respectively, for children watching TV programs and 0.023 and 0.0038 microT, respectively, for children playing video games. Geometric means of ambient ELF and VLF levels with TV sets turned off were 0.10 and 0.0027 microT, respectively. Summed over the ELF frequency range (6-3066 Hz), the exposure levels were small compared to ambient levels. However, in restricted ELF frequency ranges (120 Hz and 606-3066 Hz) and in the VLF band, TV exposure levels were comparable to or larger than normal ambient levels. Even so, the strengths of the 120 Hz or 606-3066 Hz components of TV fields were small relative to the overall ambient levels. Consequently, our results provide little support for a linkage between childhood leukemia and exposure to the ELF magnetic fields produced by TV sets. Our results do suggest that any future research on possible health effects of magnetic fields from television sets might focus on the VLF electric and magnetic fields produced by TV sets because of their enhanced ability relative to ELF fields to induce electric currents.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

The play's the thing: a clinical-developmental perspective on video games.

In this article, computer and video games are discussed as electronic play. Major perspectives on play and salient developmental issues are presented, along with similarities and differences between electronic play and other types of play. The authors consider possible benefits and risks associated with this type of play, with particular attention paid to cognitive and socioemotional development. Recommendations for clinicians in their work with children, adolescents, and parents are discussed, as are future directions for research.

Child↗
PubMed2006

Association between television, movie, and video game exposure and school performance.

BACKGROUND: The relationship between media exposure and school performance has not been studied extensively in adolescents. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this work was to test the relative effects of television, movie, and video game screen time and content on adolescent school performance. METHODS: We conducted a population-based cross-sectional survey of middle school students (grades 5-8) in the Northeastern United States. We looked at weekday television and video game screen time, weekend television and video game screen time, cable movie channel availability, parental R-rated movie restriction, and television content restriction. The main outcome was self-report of school performance (excellent, good, average, or below average). We used ordinal logistic-regression analysis to test the independent effects of each variable, adjusting for demographics, child personality, and parenting style. RESULTS: There were 4508 students who participated in the study; gender was equally represented, and 95% were white. In multivariate analyses, after adjusting for other covariates, the odds of poorer school performance increased with increasing weekday television screen time and cable movie channel availability and decreased with parental restriction of television content restriction. As compared with children whose parents never allowed them to watch R-rated movies, children who watched R-rated movies once in a while, sometimes, or all of the time had significantly increased cumulative odds of poorer school performance. Weekend screen time and video game use were not associated with school performance. CONCLUSIONS: We found that both content exposure and screen time had independent detrimental associations with school performance. These findings support parental enforcement of American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for media time (particularly weekdays) and content limits to enhance school success.

Achievement↗
PubMed2004

Boys' and girls' use of cognitive strategy when learning to play video games.

The authors examined gender differences in the cognitive strategies that children use when they learn how to play a video game. They interviewed 2nd- and 5th-grade boys and girls about how often they played video games and what they did "when learning how to play a video game." The children's responses to the latter question were categorized as either internally or externally oriented (i.e., reading a manual vs. asking for help, respectively). The results indicated that more frequent players and older children were more likely to cite internally based strategies. No main effects of gender were found for the proportions of the internally vs. externally based strategies that were cited.

Child↗
PubMed1998

Epilepsies and video games: results of a multicentric study.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to research whether or not video games may induce paroxysmal discharges (PD) in different groups of patients. METHODS: One hundred and fifteen subjects from 5 different French laboratories were studied: 33 had seizures exclusively under visual stimuli, 42 had both photogenic seizures and spontaneous seizures occuring independently, and 40 had non-photogenic seizures. The same protocol which included one TV sequence, 3 sequences of video games selected on particular criteria (pattern, luminosity and nature of the scene), were presented at different distances from the TV screen at 50 and 100 Hz. RESULTS: Among the factors provoking paroxysmal discharges (PD) some seem crucial: the frequency of the TV screen (the 100 Hz screen was significantly safer than 50 Hz), the distance from the screen (1 m safer than 50 cm), and, particularly for the 50 Hz screen, the specific pattern of the images and the act of playing. CONCLUSIONS: Video games are ineffective for subjects known as having a non-photosensitive epilepsy, but may induce PD on subjects known as photosensitive even when intermittent light stimulation (ILS) is not effective. These results based on a different approach than in other publications confirm data which were suggested by the literature, and suggest that 100 Hz TV screens should be recommended to patients with TV-induced attacks.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

Effect of playing a video game on a measure of spatial visualization.

70 undergraduate students, without any prior experience of video games playing, were given a pretest and a posttest on the Space Relations Test of the DAT, Forms A and B being, respectively, administered on the two occasions. The experimental group of 38 had eight sessions of playing the Zaxxon video game, each session including five plays. The control group of 32 received no such treatment. A 2 (sex) by 2 (group) analysis of covariance, using pretest scores as the covariate, yielded a significant effect for group which supports the hypothesis that spatial visualization test scores can be improved by video game playing. Moreover, the sex-related difference in visual-spatial skills frequently reported does not appear on the pretest. Finally, no effect for sex and no interaction of group X sex were found, indicating that both male and female subjects gained equally from playing Zaxxon.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Effect of bilingualism and computer video game experience on the Simon task.

A group of 97 participants who were monolingual or bilingual and who had extensive practice playing computer video games or not completed two Simon tasks. The tasks were presented in two conditions that manipulated the number of response switches required in each block of trials. Bilingualism and video-game experience each influenced a different aspect of performance: Video-game players were faster in most conditions, including control conditions that did not include conflict from irrelevant position; bilinguals were faster only in a condition that required the most controlled attention to resolve conflict from the position and the stimulus. The results show the potential of experience to modify performance and point to subtle processing differences in various versions of the Simon task.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Sustained decrease in oxygenated hemoglobin during video games in the dorsal prefrontal cortex: a NIRS study of children.

Traditional neuroimaging studies have mainly focused on brain activity derived from a simple stimulus and task. Therefore, little is known about brain activity during daily operations. In this study, we investigated hemodynamic changes in the dorsal prefrontal cortex (DPFC) during video games as one of daily amusements, using near infrared spectroscopy technique. It was previously reported that oxygenated hemoglobin (oxyHb) in adults' DPFC decreased during prolonged game playing time. In the present study, we examined whether similar changes were observed in children. Twenty children (7-14 years old) participated in our study, but only 13 of them were eventually subject to analysis. They played one or two commercially available video games; namely a fighting and a puzzle game, for 5 min. We used changes in concentration of oxyHb as an indicator of brain activity and consequently, most of the children exhibited a sustained game-related oxyHb decrease in DPFC. Decrease patterns of oxyHb in children during video game playing time did not differ from those in adults. There was no significant correlation between ages or game performances and changes in oxyHb. These findings suggest that game-related oxyHb decrease in DPFC is a common phenomenon to adults and children at least older than 7 years old, and we suggest that this probably results from attention demand from the video games rather than from subject's age and performance.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

The effects of action video game experience on the time course of inhibition of return and the efficiency of visual search.

The ability to efficiently search the visual environment is a critical function of the visual system, and recent research has shown that experience playing action video games can influence visual selective attention. The present research examined the similarities and differences between video game players (VGPs) and non-video game players (NVGPs) in terms of the ability to inhibit attention from returning to previously attended locations, and the efficiency of visual search in easy and more demanding search environments. Both groups were equally good at inhibiting the return of attention to previously cued locations, although VGPs displayed overall faster reaction times to detect targets. VGPs also showed overall faster response time for easy and difficult visual search tasks compared to NVGPs, largely attributed to faster stimulus-response mapping. The findings suggest that relative to NVGPs, VGPs rely on similar types of visual processing strategies but possess faster stimulus-response mappings in visual attention tasks.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Identifying video game addiction in children and adolescents.

There is a current trend of thought among some scholars of gambling that arcade video game playing in some adolescents may develop into a behavior which resembles a gambling addiction. A scale, developed to identify arcade video game addiction in adolescents, was administered to 467 secondary school children in a coastal town in the UK. Initial psychometric tests show that the scale has acceptable internal consistency reliability and factorial validity, and is significantly related to alternative means of assessing excessive video game play. The implications of the study findings are discussed together with its limitations and suggestions for future research.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Video game epilepsy.

Reflex epilepsy is the commonest form of epilepsy in which seizures are provoked by specific external stimulus. Photosensitive reflex epilepsy is provoked by environmental flicker stimuli. Video game epilepsy is considered to be its variant or a pattern sensitive epilepsy. The mean age of onset is around puberty and boys suffer more commonly as they are more inclined to play video games. Television set or computer screen is the commonest precipitants. The treatment remains the removal of the offending stimulus along with drug therapy. Long term prognosis in these patients is better as photosensitivity gradually declines with increasing age. We present two such case of epilepsy induced by video game.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

The appeal of violent video games to lower educated aggressive adolescent boys from two countries.

The objective of this study was to test the effect of individual differences on appeal and use of video games. Participants were 299 adolescent boys from lower and higher secondary schools in the Netherlands and Belgium. In general, boys were most attracted to violent video games. Boys that scored higher in trait aggressiveness and lower in empathy were especially attracted to violent games and spent more time playing video games than did boys lower in trait aggressiveness. Lower educated boys showed more appreciation for both violent and nonviolent games and spent more time playing them than did higher educated boys. The present study showed that aggressive and less empathic boys were most attracted to violent games. The fact that heavy users of violent games show less empathy and higher aggressiveness suggests the possibility of desensitization. Other studies have shown that playing violent games increases aggressiveness and decreases empathy. These results combined suggest the possibility of a violence cycle. Aggressive individuals are attracted to violent games. Playing violent games increases aggressiveness and decreases empathy, which in turn leads to increased appreciation and use of violent games.

Adolescent↗