Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, October 26 (Xinhua) parents often worry about the harmful effects of video games on their children, including mental health and social problems. But a large new study published Monday in the online edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that video games may also have cognitive benefits for children.

CTOnews.com learned that the lead author of the study, Bader Chaarani, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, told AFP that he was a gamer and had expertise in neuroimaging, so he was naturally drawn to the topic.

Previous studies have focused on the harmful effects of video games, often linking games with depression and increased aggression. But Charani says these studies are limited by the relatively small number of participants, especially those involving brain imaging.

In the new study, Charani and his colleagues analyzed data from an ongoing large adolescent brain cognitive development (ABCD) study funded by the National Institutes of Health. They studied the survey answers, cognitive test results and brain images of about 2000 9-and 10-year-old children who were divided into two groups: those who never played games and those who played three hours or more a day.

Each group of children was assigned two tasks. The first task is to see the arrows pointing to the left or right and ask the children to press left or right as fast as they can. They were also asked not to press anything when they saw a "stop" signal to measure their ability to control impulses.

In the second task, the researchers showed them a picture of a face and asked them to try to remember. Then show some face pictures and ask them if they match the previously shown face pictures to test their "working memory". "working memory" is a memory system with limited capacity for temporary processing and storage of information, which plays an important role in many complex cognitive activities.

After using statistical methods to control variables such as parents' income, IQ and mental health symptoms, the team found that a group of children who played video games consistently performed better on both tasks.

And while the children were performing both tasks, the researchers scanned their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and found that children who played video games were more active in areas associated with attention and memory.

"these results raise the interesting possibility that video games may provide a cognitive training experience with measurable neurocognitive effects," the researchers concluded in their paper. "

Charani says it is not clear whether it is because some children have better cognitive abilities that lead them to play more video games, or whether they have stronger cognitive abilities because they play more video games.

The team hopes that as the study continues, they will get a clearer answer and plan to observe and study the children when they are older, which will also help rule out other potential contributing factors. such as children's family environment, exercise and sleep quality.

"of course, excessive use of screens is bad for overall mental and physical health," Charani said. " But he also said the findings suggest that playing video games may be better for children than watching videos on YouTube, because the latter does not significantly improve cognitive ability.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.