NEW From yearning for a change to cost of living, why some Canadians have left or may leave the country
For some immigrants, their dreams of permanently settling in Canada have taken an unexpected twist.
It’s one of the most hot-button questions for parents in today’s world: are video games bad for my kid?
According to a small new study, the answer might be no.
New research has found that neither the frequency of daily gaming reported by pre-teen children nor the specific video game genres they chose to play had much correlation with their performance on a standardized cognitive test.
Essentially, playing video games, even for hours at a time, didn’t appear to impact their cognitive abilities.
“Our studies turned up no such links, regardless of how long the children played and what types of games they chose,” Jie Zhang, associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Houston College of Education and a member of the research team, said in a press release Tuesday.
“The study results show parents probably don’t have to worry so much about cognitive setbacks among video game-loving children, up to fifth grade. Reasonable amounts of video gaming should be OK, which will be delightful news for the kids. Just keep an eye out for obsessive behaviour.”
In the study, published in December in the peer-reviewed Journal of Media Psychology, researchers looked at the video gaming habits of 160 fifth grade students in public-school in the U.S.
Students reported playing an average of 2.5 hours of video games a day, with the most dedicated gamers reporting up to 4.5 hours per day. Researchers also gathered information on the genres of games that they played, as high-speed action games have previously been linked with enhanced cognitive skills in some other studies.
“Overall, neither duration of play nor choice of video game genres had significant correlations with the (test results),” May Jadalla, professor in the School of Teaching and Learning at Illinois State University and the study’s principal investigator, said in the release. “That result shows no direct linkage between video game playing and cognitive performance, despite what had been assumed.”
Previous studies that have aimed to track the impact of video games on children’s cognitive abilities have largely focused on measurements of cognition such as academic performance through grades or self-reported learning assessments, researchers stated.
In this study, children were all asked to take the standardized Cognitive Ability Test 7, known as CogAT. This test seeks to measure a child’s reasoning and problem solving, through verbal and non-verbal assessments involving spatial skills.
Researchers found that there was no clear link between the students’ scores with CogAT and the amount of hours they spent playing video games or the genre of video games.
They also found that video games that claimed to help develop or train cognitive skills also appeared to have little impact on the students’ CogAT results — indicating that while video games may not have a negative impact on children’s brains, they may also not have a directly positive one either, even when advertised as such, according to this study.
“The current study found results that are consistent with previous research showing that types of gameplay that seem to augment cognitive functions in young adults don’t have the same impact in much younger children,” C. Shawn Green, professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in the release.
The study is limited by its small sample size and its narrow scope in focusing on pre-teen children in the U.S. But researchers say parents should feel a little less worried about what video games might be doing to their kids’ brains.
If parents are looking for guidelines regarding video games for their kids, researchers noted that extremely long durations of gaming did correlate with a very slight dip in CogAT results. Researchers believe this is less likely to be caused by the video games themselves and more likely caused by the fact that when you put all of your time into one activity, other activities like homework may fall by the wayside.
“When it comes to video games, finding common ground between parents and young kids is tricky enough,” Zhang said. “At least now we understand that finding balance in childhood development is the key, and there’s no need for us to over-worry about video gaming.”
For some immigrants, their dreams of permanently settling in Canada have taken an unexpected twist.
Studies have shown that ultraprocessed foods can have a detrimental impact on health. But 30 years of research show they don’t all have the same impact.
Forging ahead with increasing Canada's capital gains inclusion rate 'sows division,' and is a 'shortsighted' way to improve the deficit, business groups are warning Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
An Ontario man considering having his driveway paved received a quote from a company for $7,000, but then, another paver in the neighbourhood knocked on his door and offered half that rate.
Stormy Daniels will return to the witness stand Thursday in Donald Trump's hush money trial as the defence tries to undermine the credibility of the porn actor's salacious testimony about their alleged sexual encounter and the money she was paid to keep quiet.
Amid evidence of rising breast cancer rates among young women in Canada, one Toronto startup is offering a contactless and radiation-free device that can help doctors identify suspicious changes in breast tissue. The company, Linda Lifetech, says this can lead to earlier detection of breast cancer.
Forecasters warned a wave of dangerous storms in the U.S. could wash over parts of the South early Thursday, a day after severe weather with damaging tornadoes and large hail killed at least three people in the region.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
There is currently a whooping cough epidemic in Europe, with 10 times as many cases compared to the previous two years. While an outbreak has not been declared nationwide in Canada, whooping cough is regularly detected in the country.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.