Violent Video Games Linked to Aggressive Behavior? New Research Suggests Loss of Impulse Control
New research on violent video games suggest that games boost visual attention but reduce impulse control which can result in aggressive behavior.
"We believe that any game that requires the same type of rapid responding as in most first-person shooters may produce similar effects on proactive executive control, regardless of violent content," said Craig Anderson, Director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University to Science Daily. "However, this is quite speculative."
He warns that research is starting to link "screen time" playing games to attention problems and in some cases, an increase in aggression.
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"Proactive cognitive control involves keeping information active in short-term memory for use in later judgments, a kind of task preparation," Anderson said regarding two types of control capacity. "Reactive control is more of a just-in-time type of decision resolution."
Anderson's studies have concluded that violent or action video games develop better visuospatial attention skills, but reduced the proactive cognitive control.
"These studies are the first to link violent video game play with both beneficial and harmful effects within the same study," he found.
The study involved non gaming participants who participated in 50 minute sessions spread over 10 sessions in 11 weeks. They either played a fighting game, Unreal Tournament, or slow paced reality game Sims 2, or they did nothing. The participants were tested on their proactive cognitive control and visual attention before and after the sessions.
"They found marked decreases in proactive cognitive control among the action game players versus the Sims players or non-game players. At the same time, there were marked increases in the visual attention skills of action gamers," said Science Daily.
Another case study involved exposing 422 people to violent media or total media exposure. The findings show that both contributed to attention problems, while violent media was associated directly with anger, hostility, and aggression.
"Impulsive aggression, by definition, is aggressive behavior that occurs automatically, or almost automatically, without evidence of any inhibition or thought about whether it should be carried out," Anderson said. "This is theoretically consistent with the idea that attention problems interfere with people's ability to inhibit inappropriate impulsive behavior."
"What such fast-paced media fail to train is inhibiting the almost automatic first response," Anderson said. "This is the essence of ADD, ADHD, and measures of impulsivity. That's why attention problems are more strongly related to impulsive aggression than to premeditated aggression."
These findings go hand in hand with a report that surfaced several weeks ago proclaiming video games can be linked to addictive behavior in children with autism or ADHD.
