Violent Video Games Sharpen Focus, But Is This A Good Thing?

Research tells us that playing violent video games can enhance vision, spatial attention, and executive function (the ability to make meaningful decisions). Epidemiologists report that over 90 percent of children and teens play video games in the United States, and significant numbers of adults do, too, since the average age of video gamers in the USA is 33. But are the benefits of brain-training worth the repeated exposure to violent images?

Attention, Focus, and Violent Video Games

Advertisers who place ads inside violent video games are keenly interested in the question of whether the gaming experience enhances or inhibits attention to commercial content.

After all, if gamers don't pay attention to the ads, then they don't buy the products that pay for the development of the game. Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin found evidence for a "limited capacity" model of attention during the playing of the game. Teenagers playing a video game are more interested in the game than in the advertising.

However, researchers at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas, found that any changes in the ability of the brain to pay attention while playing violent video games does not necessarily carry over into other daily activities — in other words, the ability to focus when the gamer is not gaming.

The effects of video games on academic performance may be more of a matter of time management skills than of the effects of interactive video.

Where violent video games may actually change the brain with positive results is in changing the sense of time. It's natural to pay less attention to activities that have a long-term payoff than those that have a short-term payoff. Since any kind of inattention while playing a video game results in losing the game, hard-core video gamers may be less inclined to pay attention and focus to activities with indefinite future rewards, such as schoolwork.

Improving Visual Skills While Playing Video Games

Scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore conducted an experiment that concluded that teens playing video games (although not necessarily violent video games) develop the ability to compensate for blinking. In the blink of an eye, as many of us experience vision, an object may be lost. When Singapore teens who had not played video games before were invited to the lab to play video games 5 times a week, they developed an ability to continue tracking an object even through a blink and to track multiple objects at the same time.

Eye-Hand Coordination Improvements From Video Gaming

Laparoscopic surgery is an activity that requires the surgeon to have highly refined eye-hand coordination. Professors of medicine at Sapienza University in Rome developed a training program using the Nintendo Wii to train surgeons in the skills that allow them to operate without cutting into their patients. The "Play to Become a Surgeon" program may become a standard part of the school's surgical curriculum.

All of these benefits of video gaming, however, are obtained whether the game is violent or not. Could there be a downside to violent video games — and especially first-person shooters — that offsets their usefulness in training the brain?

The Downside Of Violent Video Games

Psychotherapists have long been concerned about potential psychological damage from repeated exposure to violent video games. The psychological payoff from a violent video game is the opportunity to indulge in a taboo behavior, killing people, without punishment or consequences. A video game without violence is, naturally, highly frustrating to its users.

Violent Video Games Alter the Flow of Blood in the Brain

Indulging in a taboo behavior, even in a fantasy game, comes at a price. 

The more characters the gamer kills during the game, the lower the blood flow to the anterior cingulate cortex. The brain has to "turn off" its center for detection of moral mistakes for the gamer to participate in a violent game, much like a soldier has to switch off that part of the brain to function optimally.

Noise from Video Games Affects Cardiac Coherence

Blasts of noise from violent video games also affect the heart. Violent video games reduce a quality of the heartbeat known as cardiac coherence. The rhythm of the heart stimulates the brain. When the heart beats too slowly (as the result of medication or disease), lack of brain stimulation leads to depression. 

An altruistic, caring personality is affected less by violent video gaming, and self-centered, narcissistic personalities are affected more, which will surprise nobody.

And Video Games in General Have a Variety of Detrimental Health Effects

Playing any kind of video game in excess, however, can have a variety of detrimental effects on a person's health.

In the United States, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System sponsored by the Centers of Disease Control reports that in an average month, 1 in 3 teens is involved in a fight, and 1 in 5 teens either bullies or is bullied. We don't know that violent video grams keep these numbers high — but if the urge to game is taking over a teen's life, intervention is required, especially when you keep in mind that the rise in cyberbullying certainly unfolds in online multiplayer games as well.