The issue of children’s exposure to violent video games has been a source of considerable debate for several decades. Questions persist whether children with pre-existing mental health problems may be influenced adversely by exposure to violent games, even if other children are not. We explored this issue with 377 children (62 % female, mixed ethnicity, mean age = 12.93) displaying clinically elevated attention deficit or depressive symptoms on the Pediatric Symptom Checklist. Results from our study found no evidence for increased bullying or delinquent behaviors among youth with clinically elevated mental health symptoms who also played violent video games. Our results did not support the hypothesis that children with elevated mental health symptoms constitute a “vulnerable” population for video game violence effects. Implications and suggestions for further research are provided.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/S10964-013-9986-5
CONTEXT. Youth worldwide play violent video games many hours per week. Previous research suggests that such exposure can increase physical aggression.
OBJECTIVE. We tested whether high exposure to violent video games increases physical aggression over time in both high- (United States) and low- (Japan) violence cultures. We hypothesized that the amount of exposure to violent video games early in a school year would predict changes in physical aggressiveness assessed later in the school year, even after statistically controlling for gender and previous physical aggressiveness.
DESIGN. In 3 independent samples, participants’ video game habits and physically aggressive behavior tendencies were assessed at 2 points in time, separated by 3 to 6 months.
PARTICIPANTS. One sample consisted of 181 Japanese junior high students ranging in age from 12 to 15 years. A second Japanese sample consisted of 1050 students ranging in age from 13 to 18 years. The third sample consisted of 364 United States 3rd-, 4th-, and 5th-graders ranging in age from 9 to 12 years.
RESULTS. Habitual violent video game play early in the school year predicted later aggression, even after controlling for gender and previous aggressiveness in each sample. Those who played a lot of violent video games became relatively more physically aggressive. Multisample structure equation modeling revealed that this longitudinal effect was of a similar magnitude in the United States and Japan for similar-aged youth and was smaller (but still significant) in the sample that included older youth.
CONCLUSIONS. These longitudinal results confirm earlier experimental and cross-sectional studies that had suggested that playing violent video games is a significant risk factor for later physically aggressive behavior and that this violent video game effect on youth generalizes across very different cultures. As a whole, the research strongly suggests reducing the exposure of youth to this risk factor.
Psychology of Violence, Vol 1(4), Oct 2011, 259-274
Objective: This study is the first to our knowledge to isolate the effect of video game violence and competitiveness on aggressive behaviour.
Method: In Pilot Study 1, a violent and nonviolent video game were matched on competitiveness, difficulty, and pace of action, and the effect of each game on aggressive behaviour was then compared using an unambiguous measure of aggressive behaviour (i.e., the Hot Sauce Paradigm) in Experiment 1. In Pilot Study 2, competitiveness was isolated by matching games on difficulty and pace of action, and systematically controlling for violence. The effect of video game competition on aggressive behaviour was then examined in Experiment 2.
Results: We found that video game violence was not sufficient to elevate aggressive behaviour compared with a nonviolent video game, and that more competitive games produced greater levels of aggressive behaviour, irrespective of the amount of violence in the games.
Conclusion: It appears that competition, not violence, may be the video game characteristic that has the greatest influence on aggressive behaviour. Future research is needed to explore the mechanisms through which video game competitiveness influences aggressive behaviour, as well as whether this relation holds in the long-term. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0024908
Published online 18th April 2013
The majority of research on the link between video games and aggression has focused on the violent content in games. In contrast, recent experimental research suggests that it is video game competition, not violence, that has the greatest effect on aggression in the short-term. However, no researchers have examined the long-term relationship between video game competition and aggression. In addition, if competition in video games is a significant reason for the link between video game play and aggression, then other competitive activities, such as competitive gambling, also may predict aggression over time.
In the current study, we directly assessed the socialization (competitive video game play and competitive gambling predicts aggression over time) versus selection hypotheses (aggression predicts competitive video game play and competitive gambling over time). Adolescents (N = 1,492, 50.8 % female) were surveyed annually from Grade 9 to Grade 12 about their video game play, gambling, and aggressive behaviours. Greater competitive video game play and competitive gambling predicted higher levels of aggression over time, after controlling for previous levels of aggression, supporting the socialization hypothesis. The selection hypothesis also was supported, as aggression predicted greater competitive video game play and competitive gambling over time, after controlling for previous competitive video game play and competitive gambling. Our findings, taken together with the fact that millions of adolescents play competitive video games every day and that competitive gambling may increase as adolescents transition into adulthood, highlight the need for a greater understanding of the relationship between competition and aggression.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-013-9952-2
Television, video game and social media use among children with ASD and typically developing sibling
First Published online September 2012
This study examined the nature of television, video game, and social media use in children (ages 8–18) with autism spectrum disorders (ASD, n = 202) compared to typically developing siblings (TD, n = 179), and relative to other activities. Parents completed measures assessing children’s screen-based and other extracurricular activities. Children with ASD spent approximately 62 % more time watching television and playing video games than in all non-screen activities combined. Compared with TD siblings, children with ASD spent more hours per day playing video games (2.4 vs. 1.6 for boys, and 1.8 vs. 0.8 for girls), and had higher levels of problematic video game use. In contrast, children with ASD spent little time using social media or socially interactive video games.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-012-1659-9
Exposure to media violence, including violent video gaming, can have a cognitive desensitization effect, lowering empathic concern for others in need. Since emerging adulthood offers increased opportunities to volunteer, strengthen relationships, and initiate new relationships, decreases in empathic concern and prosocial behavior may prove inhibitive to optimal development during this time. For these reasons, the current study investigated associations between violent video gaming, empathic responding, and prosocial behavior enacted toward strangers, friends, and family members. Participants consisted of 780 emerging adults (M age = 19.60, SD = 1.86, range = 18–29, 69% female, 69% Caucasian) from four universities in the United States. Results showed small to moderate effects between playing violent video gaming and lowered empathic concern for both males and females. In addition, lowered empathic concern partially mediated the pathways between violent video gaming and prosocial behavior toward all three targets (at the level of a trend for females), but was most strongly associated with lower prosocial behavior toward strangers. Discussion highlights how violent video gaming is associated with lower levels of prosocial behavior through the mechanism of decreased empathic concern, how this association can affect prosocial behavior differently across target, and finally what implications this might have for development during emerging adulthood.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10964-012-9742-2
We examined the role of parental media mediation in the relationship between media violence and adolescents’ ADHD-related behaviors. Survey data from 1,017 adolescents (10–14 years) show that parents can play an important role in this relationship, depending on the media mediation strategies that they use (i.e., restrictive or active mediation) and how they apply these strategies (i.e., in a controlling, inconsistent, or autonomy-supportive way). Our findings support the notion that contextual factors are critical in understanding media effects, and provide directions for how parents can manage their adolescents’ violent media use, and possibly by extension, their ADHD-related behaviors.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08838151.2016.1234476
What are the conclusions - WHAT next in your study, what will you do with all these findings, WHAT do they prove?
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