video games research article

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A new look at the cognitive neuroscience of video game play

Affiliations.

1 Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
2 Faculté de Psychologie et Sciences de L'Education (FPSE), Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland.
3 Campus Biotech, Geneva, Switzerland.
4 Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin.
PMID: 31943260
DOI: 10.1111/nyas.14295

A growing body of literature has investigated the effects of playing video games on brain function and behavior. One key takeaway from this literature has been that not all entertainment video games are created equal with respect to their effects on cognitive functioning. The majority of the research to date has contrasted the cognitive impact of playing first- or third-person shooter games (together dubbed "action video games") against the effects of playing other game types. Indeed, when the research began in the late 1990s, action video games placed a load upon the perceptual, attentional, and cognitive systems in a manner not seen in other video games. However, the video game industry has shifted dramatically over the intervening years. In particular, first- and third-person shooter games are no longer unique in the extent to which they load upon cognitive abilities. Instead, a host of other game genres appear to place similar degrees of load upon these systems. This state of affairs calls for a paradigm shift in the way that the cognitive neuroscience field examines the impact of video game play on cognitive skills and their neural mediators-a shift that is only just now slowly occurring.

Keywords: action video games; behavioral intervention studies; cognitive enhancement; video games.

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Video games and board games: Effects of playing practice on cognition

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft

Affiliation Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l’Apprentissage, Université de Poitiers, Poitiers, France

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Léa Martinez,
Manuel Gimenes,
Eric Lambert

Published: March 27, 2023
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283654
Reader Comments

The worldwide popularity of playing practices has led to a growing research interest in games’ impact on behavior and cognition. Many studies have already reported the benefits of both video games and board games for cognitive functions. However, these studies have mainly defined the term players according to a minimum play time or in connection to a specific game genre. No study has confronted the cognitive implications of video games and board games in the same statistical model. Thus, it remains unclear whether the cognitive benefits of play are due to play time or game type. To address this issue, in this study, we conducted an online experiment in which 496 participants completed six cognitive tests and a playing practice questionnaire. We examined the between the participants’ overall video game and board game play times and cognitive abilities. The results demonstrated significant relations between overall play time and all cognitive functions. Importantly, video games significantly predicted mental flexibility, planning, visual working memory, visuospatial processing, fluid intelligence, and verbal working memory performance, while board games were not found to predict any cognitive performance. These findings suggest that video games affect cognitive functions in specific ways compared to board games. We encourage further investigation to consider players’ individual differences through their play time and the specific features of the games they play.

Citation: Martinez L, Gimenes M, Lambert E (2023) Video games and board games: Effects of playing practice on cognition. PLoS ONE 18(3): e0283654. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283654

Editor: Stefano Triberti, University of Milan, ITALY

Received: September 28, 2022; Accepted: March 13, 2023; Published: March 27, 2023

Copyright: © 2023 Martinez et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Data are available in an Open Science Framework repository, which can be accessed at: https://osf.io/bfv97/ .

Funding: This work was supported by a grant from the ANRT https://www.anrt.asso.fr/fr/cifre-35654 and the Asmodee Company [Bourse CIFRE 2020/0536] to Léa Martinez. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Boasting global markets of over US$150 billion for video games [ 1 ] and over US$7 billion for board games [ 2 ], the game industry represents a major entertainment market. Indeed, the video and board game industries offer a wide range of games that are usable in various domains. The growing popularity of games markets has led to an increasing amount of research on how game practice affects human behavior and cognitive functions. A common method of carrying out such research is to compare players’ and nonplayers’ abilities. Therefore, recent studies have mainly shown that players demonstrate better cognitive performance than non-players do [ 3 , 4 ]. Until now, players have generally been defined according to an overall minimum play time or to a minimum game genre-specific play time. However, player profiles are numerous and represent a wide diversity of playing practices. Moreover, a primary limitation of such research involves the lack of consideration of variability in the players’ play time and the type of game they play. Therefore, it remains unclear whether the cognitive benefits of play are due to overall play time or to specific game types.

Play time–based definition of players

Video games’ benefits for cognitive functions have already been widely demonstrated, with a main effect on executive functions [ 3 ]. Many studies have shown that video gamers outperform non-gamers in terms of attention, visuospatial, working memory, and mental flexibility performances [ 5 – 7 ]. For example, one study considered visual working memory skills and found that participants who played video games for more than 5 hours per week outperformed participants who played video games for less than 5 hours per week in connection to these skills [ 8 ]. Similarly, video game training has been shown to improve attention, visuospatial, and working memory skills [ 9 – 11 ]. For example, playing Call of Duty for 28 hours significantly improved visual working memory performance [ 9 ]. Therefore, recent literature widely supports the beneficial effect of video gaming on cognitive and executive abilities. However, these findings are mainly based on the opposition between gamers and non-gamers as a way to compare the cognitive performance of the two groups. In this way, a first limitation to fully understanding the relationship between play and cognitive functions is the failure to consider individual differences within the gamer group [ 12 ], such as variability in gamers’ overall play time.

Most studies have focused on video gamers and defined them according to their amount of play time in the previous months (e.g., Wong & Chang, (2018) [ 13 ] defined participants who played video games for more than 4 hours a week over the past 6 months as video gamers). However, a consensus has not been reached on the amount of play time defining a video gamer. In their literature review on video games and cognitive enhancement, Choi et al. (2020) [ 3 ] listed 10 studies in which video gamers were defined based on the number of hours spent playing video games per week. In the various studies, participants were considered video gamers if they played for more than 2 hours to 15 hours per week, whereas non-gamers were defined as playing less than 1 hour to 8 hours per week. Therefore, the current way of defining gamers into two groups (i.e., gamers and non-gamers) without considering the variability of their gaming experience represents a bias. Only a few studies have focused on the effect of video gaming on cognitive functions according to specific gamers’ expertise and their play time. These studies mostly examined electronic sports (e-sports) gamers’ cognitive abilities. The term e-sports refers to the individual and collective practice of engaging in video game competitions [ 14 ]. E-sports gamers are mostly considered expert gamers, and they are sometimes professional gamers. Since e-sports gamers report higher play times than casual gamers do [ 5 ], focusing on these gamers allows the effects of intensive video game practice on cognitive functions to be studied. Professional e-sports gamers usually outperform nonprofessional, casual gamers on cognitive tests, such as visuospatial processing, visuospatial memory, and attention tests [ 5 , 15 ]. For example, professional e-sports gamers who play more than 20 hours a week have shown better visuospatial processing, visuospatial memory, and attention performance compared with casual video gamers who play more than 5 hours per week [ 5 ]. The same results have been found when comparing professional and nonprofessional e-sports gamers. Professional e-sports gamers who play about 35 hours a week have been found to outperform nonprofessional e-sports gamers who play about 20 hours a week on a simple visual reaction test [ 15 ]. Thus, whether professional or not, it seems that the more time gamers spend playing video games, the higher their cognitive performance becomes. However, the comparison between e-sports gamers and amateur gamers leads to a confounding variable. Indeed, e-sports corresponds to a specific game practice based on specific video game genres and on competition only. Thus, there is a need to confirm that play time affects the cognitive performance of amateur players. Recent studies overcame the gamer/non-gamer dichotomy by using ordinal variables [ 16 ] or continuous variables [ 17 ] to account for gaming time. Kowal et al. (2018) [ 16 ] categorized participants into five video game time groups (i.e., 0, 1–7, 8–15, 16–22, and 23+ hours per week) and compared the groups’ inhibition and mental flexibility skills. The findings showed that the group with the highest video game time had the lowest overall reaction times to the Stroop test and the lowest non-switching and switching reaction times to the Trail Making Test. However, it remains unclear whether play time, taken as a continuous variable, underlies cognitive performance. Waris et al. (2019) [ 17 ] assessed the relations between time spent playing video games per week and working memory skills. The authors found strong evidence for positive linear relations between weekly video game time and visual working memory and updating skills. However, no significant relation was found considering verbal working memory skills. Therefore, it remains to be confirmed whether play time, taken as a continuous variable, is a significant predictor of overall cognitive abilities.

Game type–based definition of players

In addition to the dichotomous definition of players, a second limitation that restricts a full understanding of the potential relationship between play and cognitive functions is the lack of consideration of playing practice diversity. Numerous studies have highlighted the great potential of action video games to improve cognitive abilities. Action video games can be defined as video games with time pressure, requiring switching between distributed and focused attention and preventing full task automatization [ 18 ]. Bediou et al.’s (2018) [ 19 ] meta-analysis showed that playing action video games robustly improves attention and visuospatial cognition. However, any video game genre (e.g., traditional, simulation, strategy, action, or fantasy video games) may also have the potential to improve cognitive performance [ 3 ]. For example, one study found that players’ visuospatial skills significantly improved after playing the strategy game Portal 2 for 8 hours [ 11 ].

Furthermore, few studies have focused on the effects of non-digital games, such as board games, on cognitive functions. However, a clear-cut distinction exists between video games and board games, as they are defined by unique game features that do not apply equally to both types of games. Inherently, video games correspond to numeric leisure, while board games are mainly analog games. Even though some digitized board games that fully reflect their analog versions exist, they represent only the minority of board games and practices. Moreover, video games are mainly played alone, while board games are played in groups. There is a current trend in which online video game players are playing these games because they allow for interactions between gamers, but these are remote interactions, while board games mostly imply physical and social interactions between the players. In addition, video games are mostly defined by real-time dynamics. Gamers are most often required to make real-time decisions, which are led by the pace of the game. They provide a diversity of actions and environments in a single game, training strategy adaptation skills [ 20 ]. Rather, board games are defined by their requirement for social interactions. They allow for the training of specific strategies and actions in a given game, which mainly depend on players’ interactions.

A new research field on board games and cognitive functions recently emerged [ 21 ], but the number of studies in this field remains limited. These studies have mostly focused on the effects of traditional board games’ effects on the cognitive and executive abilities of the elderly and children’s cognitive and executive abilities [ 22 , 23 ]. Traditional board games correspond to abstract strategy games (e.g., chess, checkers, game of Go). Some training programs using this kind of game have been found to enhance working memory, attention, and global executive abilities [ 4 ]. Chess practice is positively related to fluid intelligence, short-term memory [ 24 ] and decision making performance [ 25 ], whereas game of Go practice enhances working memory performance [ 26 ]. Playing traditional board games has been shown to be related to a neural reorganization of brain areas associated with attentional control, working memory, and problem solving [ 27 , 28 ]. Similarly, playing modern board games also seems to improve cognitive and executive abilities.

Compared with traditional board games, modern board games correspond to newer games that offer a wide range of game mechanics (e.g., Ticket to Ride, Splendor, Carcassonne). Playing modern board games has been shown to be related to logical thinking [ 29 ], improved fluid intelligence [ 30 ], and improved verbal working memory [ 31 ]. Moreover, modern board games seem to enhance social abilities, including verbal, relationship, and emotional skills [ 32 ]. Although the number of studies on board games and cognitive functions remains limited, board gaming appears to affect cognitive abilities differently compared with video gaming. Board gaming seems to enhance fluid intelligence, verbal working memory, and social performance, whereas video gaming improves attention, visuospatial, working memory, and mental flexibility performance. Therefore, recent literature widely supports the beneficial effects of play on cognitive functions, but the nature of the relationship between game-specific practice and cognitive abilities still needs to be clarified. To our knowledge, no study has examined the cognitive implications of video games and board games in the same model; instead, until now, all studies have examined video gamers’ and board gamers’ cognitive abilities independently. However, the time spent playing video games and board games may be positively related. Players tend to play both game types proportionally, which leads to confounding variables. It remains unclear whether the benefits of play are due to specific game practices (i.e., video gaming and board gaming) or to overall playing practice, regardless of game type. Therefore, further investigations are needed to study the specific cognitive contributions of video games and board games concurrently in the same model.

Considering the recent literature on games and cognitive functions, the remaining question is whether the benefits of play on cognitive functions are due to the overall play time or to specific game types. To address this original question, we conducted an online experiment in which we aimed to overcome the dichotomous categorization of players. To do this, we examine the association between overall and game-specific play times and cognitive functions, considering play times as continuous variables and comparing video game and board game contributions in the same statistical model. More precisely, we compare the relationships between cognitive abilities and overall play time (i.e., the time spent playing video games and board games), the time spent playing video games and the time spent playing board games. Considering the recent literature on play and cognitive functions, we expected a significant relation between overall play time and overall cognitive performance [ 16 ], but we expected differentiated relations between game-specific play times and specific cognitive measures [ 3 , 4 ].

Materials and methods

The experiment was approved by the General Data Protection Regulation service of University XXX (declaration no. 202186).

Participants

Four hundred ninety-six French participants (268 women, mean age = 28.08 years) were recruited among undergraduate students, gaming associations, and social networks. All participants gave their written informed consent to participate and received either financial compensation (£8.5) or student course credit to complete their course unit. Individuals who played video games for 0–40 hours per week (M = 7.72, SD = 8.69) and board games 0–30 hours per week (M = 2.37, SD = 3.54), with an overall play time in the range of 0–48 hours per week (M = 10.09, SD = 10.00), were recruited ( Fig 1 ).

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Note. Each binwidth = 1 hour.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283654.g001

Regarding their main leisure activity, 24.2% of the participants reported video games, 4.03% board games, and 71.8% another leisure activity. Considering video gamers only–participants who played video games at least 1 hour per week– 72.2% reported their preferred video games as action video games (e.g., first-person shooter or multiplayer online battle arena). In addition, 27.8% reported non-action video games (e.g., strategy games and management games) as their preferred game. We noted that the most played video games were Leagues of Legends, Animal Crossing, and Mario Kart. For board gamers only–participants who played board games at least 1 hour per week– 71.3% reported their preferred board games as casual board games (e.g., party games and quiz games), and 28.7% reported expert board games (e.g., abstract games and role play games) as their preferred games. We noted that the most frequently played board games were Uno, Monopoly, and chess. Only 12.9% of the participants played digitized board games (–considered board games in this study) at least once a week, and it is important to note that only 11 participants played chess online.

Cognitive tests

Fluid intelligence..

Raven’s matrices SPM38 [ 33 ], series D and E, were computerized to measure fluid intelligence. The exact same series were used by Bartolucci et al. (2019) [ 30 ] to assess the effects of board games on fluid intelligence. Similarly, Raven’s matrices APM were used by James et al. (2011) [ 34 ] to assess the effects of video games on fluid intelligence. In this test, participants were presented with a picture composed of eight figures linked by a logical pattern and a missing figure. The task was to find the missing figure that could logically complete the picture among the eight suggested options. The test consisted of 24 experimental trials with increasing difficulty. The number of correct answers was scored.

Mental flexibility.

The test from Experiment 1 in Monsell et al., 2003 [ 35 ] was adapted to assess mental flexibility skills. The exact same task was used by Green et al. (2012) [ 36 ] to study action video gamers’ mental flexibility skills. In this test, participants were presented with four types of stimuli (blue squares, red squares, blue circles, or red circles). The task was to classify each stimulus according to its shape (square or circle) or its color (blue or red). The stimuli were displayed successively on a background composed of eight parts, defined by eight equally spaced circle radii. The horizontal radii of the background were thickened to indicate the location of the task switch. Above the horizontal radii, participants classified the stimuli as circle or square (shape condition), whereas under the horizontal radii, participants classified the stimulus as red or blue (color condition). Therefore, the task to be performed was cued by location on the screen, changing every four trials. In the shape condition, participants used the left middle or index finger to press the “Q” key or the “S” key on a computer keyboard to give their answer. In the color condition, they used their right index or middle finger to press the “L” key or the “M” key. As soon as a participant responded by pressing a key, the next stimulus was presented counterclockwise in the next locus.

The test was composed of 32 training trials and 128 experimental trials. The trials in which the instruction changed (i.e., first trials above and below the horizontal radii) corresponded to the switching condition, whereas the trials in which the instruction remained the same corresponded to the non-switching condition. Thus, the switching condition represented 25% of the trials. Accuracy (i.e., proportion of correct answers) and reaction time were recorded in both switching and non-switching conditions. The differences between the accuracy and the reaction times in both switching and non-switching conditions were then computed.

A computerized version of the Tower of London test [ 37 , 38 ] was used to assess planning skills. Boot et al. (2008) [ 39 ] used the same test to examine the relationship between video gaming and planning skills. In this test, participants were presented with a board with three pegs and three colored balls. The balls could be moved by clicking on the pegs and applying the following rules: No more than three balls could be placed on the biggest peg, no more than two balls on the middle peg, and no more than one ball on the smallest peg. The task was to reproduce a specific arrangement of the balls, which was presented at the top right-hand corner of the screen, with the smallest possible number of moves and within 60 seconds. The task included a training trial and 12 experimental trials. The number of correctly reproduced arrangements was scored.

Visual working memory.

A computerized version of the Corsi block-tapping task was used to measure visual working memory skills [ 40 ]. A similar version of the task was used by Hazarika and Dasgupta (2020) [ 41 ] to examine the neural correlates of action video gaming in visual working memory tasks. Participants were presented with nine dark blue squares, of which some randomly flashed in bright orange, in a specific order. In the forward condition, participants were required to reproduce the sequence by clicking on the same blocks in the same order, whereas in the backward condition, they were required to reproduce the sequence in reverse order. Both conditions included two training trials and two experimental trials for each sequence length, ranging from two to nine flashing blocks in the forward condition and from two to eight flashing blocks in the backward condition. Participants were informed that the sequence length would increase gradually. When they failed both trials of the same sequence length, the condition ended. The span (i.e., the longest sequence correctly reproduced) was then scored.

Verbal working memory.

The shortened version of the operation span task was used to assess verbal working memory skills [ 42 ]. A similar task was used to assess the relations between action and real-time strategy gaming and verbal working memory skills [ 43 ]. In this test, participants were required to remember letter sequences, and as a distractor task, to judge whether arithmetic operations were correct. After each operation-letter sequence, participants were asked to recall the letters in the correct order. The test was composed of two training trials and six experimental trials (two trials for each letter sequence length, ranging from four to six letters). An absolute score (i.e., the number of letter sequences correctly recalled) was recorded.

Visuospatial processing.

Peltier and Becker’s (2016) [ 44 ] visual search task was adapted to assess visuospatial processing skills. A similar task was used in Hubert-Wallander (2011) [ 45 ], assessing the visuospatial skills of action video gamers. During this test, participants were required to determine whether the figure included the letter “T” among a set of distractors (letter “L”). Participants were asked to press the “M” key or the “Q” key on a computer keyboard to give their answers. A fixation cross was displayed for 500 ms before each trial. The letters were randomly rotated from their upright positions by 0°, 45°, 90°, 135°, 180°, 225°, 270°, or 315°. The task included two training trials and 24 experimental trials (4 trials– 2 target absent, 2 target present trials–for each set size– 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, or 35 letters). The number of correct answers and the reaction time were recorded.

Player profiles

Participants’ play times were assessed using two self-reported questions: “How often do you play video/board games?” and “On average, how many hours do you play video/board games per week?” The given responses ranged on a 6-point Likert-type scale from “Never” to “Several times a day” to the first question, and responses were given in hours to the second question. The answer to the first question was used to control the answer to the second question (e.g., participants who answered “Never” to the first question and did not answer “0 hours” to the second were excluded).

Participants’ favorite video and board game genres were recorded using the alternative choice question “Choose your favorite video/board game genre." Responses were chosen from a list of common video game genres (e.g., first-person shooters, multiplayer online battle arenas, and puzzle games) and common board game genres (e.g., party games, abstract games, and quiz games). The most played games were also recorded through the open-ended question "What video game have you played the most in the last 6 months?"

The participants were all tested online from October 2021 to March 2022. They first completed the Raven matrices, Monsell, Tower of London, Corsi block-tapping, operation span, and visual search tasks, and then completed the gaming experience and demographics questionnaire, which lasted approximately 45 minutes. Because the study was conducted online, quality controls were applied to the data. Participants’ time spent on each cognitive task, responses to attention check questions between each test, and feedback reported at the end of the study were assessed. Thus, any participants who completed the study in less than 20 minutes, those who reported being distracted, those who had any cognitive disorders, or those who engaged in drug use were excluded.

Statistical analyses were performed using R [ 46 ]. For all cognitive tests, outlier reaction times to correct responses were detected and removed for each participant using three median absolute deviations around the median reaction time [ 47 ]. Outliers were also detected based on the visualization of the frequency distributions of correct responses. This was done using histograms [ 48 ].

For all statistical tests, we used an alpha level of .05. We conducted regression modeling to examine how participants’ overall play time and game-specific play times (i.e., time spent playing video games vs. time spent playing board games) were related to cognitive performance. Because no theory suggests that the relationship between play time and cognitive functioning is strictly linear, we decided to compute generalized additive models (GAMs) [ 49 ]. GAMs capture the non-linear aspects of and the variations in a relation based on flexible, smoothing splines. These splines correspond to the sum of multiple basis functions, each multiplied by a coefficient to fit the data and create the overall shape of the relation. We used the mgcv package in R to compute the GAMs. First, we tested the relation between all cognitive scores and overall play time. Second, we computed multivariate GAMs to test the relations between all the cognitive scores and game-specific play times and to determine the specific predictors of cognitive performance.

The assessed cognitive functions have been shown to be affected by aging (for a review, see Harada et al., 2013 [ 50 ]) and education level (for a review, see Lövdén et al., 2020 [ 51 ]). Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 59 years, and their highest degrees ranged from none to a doctoral degree. Thus, we decided to control for participant age and education level. All predictor variables (i.e., time spent playing video games and time spent playing board games) and control variables (i.e., age and education level) were entered into smoothing splines in the multivariate GAMs.

Relation between overall play time and cognitive performance

GAMs were computed to assess the relation between all the cognitive measures and overall play time. The estimated degrees of freedom (edf), the p-values, and the coefficients of determination (R 2 ) are reported in Table 1 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283654.t001

The overall play time was significantly related to the number of correct responses in the Raven matrices test, the number of correctly reproduced arrangements in the Tower of London test, the forward span in the Corsi block-tapping task, and the number of letter sequences correctly recalled in the operation span task. In addition, the overall play time was significantly and linearly related to the difference between the non-switching and switching reaction times in the Monsell task, the backward span in the Corsi block-tapping task, and the number of correct responses and the reaction time in the visual search task.

Relation between game-specific play time and cognitive performance

Multivariate GAMs were performed to test whether the time spent playing video games and the time spent playing board games significantly predicted cognitive measures. The time spent playing board games was found to be significantly related to age (edf = 3.865, p < .001) and education level (edf = 4.366, p = .004). Considering these significant relations and the literature on cognitive aging and education, it was necessary to control for participant age and education level. In Model 1, only age and education level were entered into the analysis. In Model 2, all predictor variables (i.e., time spent playing video games, time spent playing board games, age, and education level) were entered into the regression equations simultaneously. These analyses provided an estimate of the additional variance explained by play times when controlling for age and education level. The models’ coefficient of determination (R 2 ) and predictors’ estimated degree of freedom (edf) are reported in Table 2 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283654.t002

As expected, age was found to be a significant predictor of all assessed cognitive functions. Education level was found to be a significant predictor of all cognitive performance, except mental flexibility. Controlling for age and education level, the time spent playing video games significantly predicted the number of correct responses in the Raven matrices test, the difference between switching and non-switching reaction times in the Monsell task, the number of correctly reproduced rearrangements in the Tower of London task, the forward and backward spans in the Corsi block-tapping task, the number of letter sequences correctly recalled in the operation span task, and the reaction times in the visual search task (see Fig 2 ).

Note. Plots with 95% intervals.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283654.g002

More specifically, mental flexibility and visual working memory skills were found to be linearly related to the time spent playing video games. The more the participants played, the lower their switching cost and the higher their backward visual span (see Fig 2B and 2E ). Similarly, fluid intelligence skills were found to increase, along with video game time, especially after 10 hours of gaming per week (see Fig 2A ). Planning skills and verbal span were also found to increase with video game time, but this positive relation reached a limit between 10 and 20 hours of video gaming per week (see Fig 2C and 2F ). However, visuospatial processing speed was found to increase (i.e., lower reaction times) as video game time increased, reaching a limit around 20 hours of gaming per week and then decreasing in more intensive gamers (see Fig 2G ).

Playing practice specifically explained 5.7% of the variance in the visual forward span and 3.6% in the visual backward span, 2.8% of the variance in planning, 2.7% in mental flexibility, 2.2% in visuospatial processing skills, 2% in fluid intelligence, and 1.7% in verbal working memory. However, controlling for age and education level, the time spent playing board games was not related to any cognitive measures.

Given the wide popularity and cognitive benefits of video and board games, the current study aimed to elucidate the relationship between playing practices and cognitive abilities. Until now, players were mainly defined according to a minimum play time and a specific game type, which is not representative of real playing practices. Therefore, we overcame the dichotomous definition of players by examining whether the benefits of play were explained by the overall play time or specific playing activities. To accomplish this, we assessed the relationships between the participants’ overall and game-specific play times and six main cognitive abilities. Our results demonstrated significant relationships between overall play time and cognitive performance and revealed the important implications of video game practice time in cognitive functions.

The GAMs revealed that overall play time was related to all the assessed cognitive performances. In line with our hypothesis, the overall play time predicted fluid intelligence, mental flexibility, planning, visual and verbal working memory, and visuospatial performance. We noted positive non-linear relations between play time and planning skills, verbal span, and forward visual span, as well as positive linear relations between play time and backward visual span and visuospatial processing skills. Regarding reaction times, we noted negative linear relations between play time and mental flexibility and visuospatial processing speed. Therefore, our results showed positive relations between overall play time and both accuracy and efficiency.

Considering mental flexibility, we found only a negative linear relation between the overall play time and the difference between the non-switching and switching reaction times. The more the participants played, the higher their efficiency became, but their accuracy did not show a similar increase. This is in accordance with Dye et al.’s (2009) [ 52 ] findings showing that gamers responded faster to several switching tasks without losing accuracy. Overall, our findings are in line with the recent literature on the cognitive benefits of play [ 3 , 4 ]. Most importantly, we showed a positive relationship between play time and cognitive performance.

Using GAMs allowed for the consideration of the individual diversity of play time (e.g., 0–48 hours per week in our sample). Indeed, the dichotomous categorization of players based on minimum play time often fails to capture the current diversity of playing practices. Moreover, on a theoretical level, a consensus has not yet been reached on the minimum play time required for someone to be defined as a player. In recent studies, players have not had equal play time, and non-players are sometimes casual players, playing up to 8 hours per week [ 3 ]. Therefore, our findings showed the importance of considering play time as a continuous variable to determine the benefits of play on cognitive abilities. We confirmed the relationship between play and cognitive functions, and most importantly, we demonstrated the not necessarily linear nature of this relationship.

The implications of game-specific play times for cognitive performance were detailed via multivariate GAMs. The analyses showed that age was a significant predictor of all assessed cognitive functions, and education level was a significant predictor of all cognitive measures except mental flexibility. These results are consistent with numerous studies showing that cognitive functions are affected by age [ 50 ] and education level [ 51 ]. Comparing this model with age and education level as predictors and a model with age, education level, time spent playing video games, and time spent playing board games as predictors, playing practice was found to significantly explain 1.7% to 5.7% of the variance in different cognitive performance.

Video game practice time was found to uniquely predict all assessed cognitive abilities. In line with recent literature, video game practice was related to mental flexibility, visuospatial processing, and visual working memory skills [ 6 , 18 ]. The time spent playing video games was negatively and linearly related to the difference between non-switching and switching reaction times in the mental flexibility task. Thus, video game practice time positively predicted the limited cost of task switching on players’ efficiency. However, the time spent playing video games was non-linearly related to visual search task reaction times. Playing video games predicted higher efficiency in visuospatial processing tasks but not necessarily higher accuracy, only for gamers playing up to 20 hours a week. This is in line with the literature showing that gamers respond faster to visuospatial tasks without losing accuracy [ 53 ]. However, this relation seems to reverse when playing video games more than 25 hours a week. In addition, the time spent playing video games was positively related to the visual forward and backward spans. Interestingly, the analyses also revealed that the time spent playing video games predicted fluid intelligence, planning and verbal working memory skills.

Few studies exist on the relationship between video gaming and fluid intelligence, planning and verbal working memory [ 10 , 54 ]. However, recent literature has shown that board gamers demonstrate higher fluid intelligence [ 30 ], planning [ 55 ] and verbal working memory performance [ 31 ]. Indeed, we found that the time spent playing board games was significantly related with fluid intelligence (edf = .2.283, p = .002) and verbal working memory skills (edf = 3.720, p = .020). However, after controlling for age, education level, and video game practice time, the associations between board gaming and fluid intelligence and verbal span were no more significant in GAM analyses. Thus, by comparing the cognitive contributions of video games and board games in the same statistical model, something that has not been done in previous studies, our results highlight the specific relationship between video gaming and fluid intelligence and verbal working memory skills.

The unique implications of video game practice in cognitive functions, even after controlling for age, education level, and board game practice time, could be explained by unique game features. Indeed, compared with board games, video games imply real-time dynamics, such as real-time decision making, which have a great potential to enhance cognitive abilities. Playing video games often leads to a high level of arousal. Gamers are mainly required to maintain and manipulate information from multiple sources and to make rapid decisions. They also need to use their attention skills in a flexible manner by switching between distributed and focused attention. These features could help develop attention and mental flexibility skills [ 20 , 56 ]. Moreover, video games offer various environments, avoiding full task automatization and fostering new strategies and learning [ 20 ]. Gamers can also take advantage of increasing difficulty levels that are adapted to their skills, and they can gather immediate informative feedback, which allows them to adapt their behavior and strategies. Finally, video games are intrinsically rewarding and fun, and these characteristics have been shown to yield cognitive enhancement [ 57 ]. Further investigations are now required to define which game features particularly explain the cognitive benefits of video games.

A current issue has to do with the structural similarities existing between games’ mechanisms and cognitive tests. Some authors highlighted that the relationship between gaming and cognitive abilities may only demonstrate the training of specific behavioral responses to stimuli that are shared between games and cognitive tasks (e.g., the requirement for rapid responses to a first-person shooter game and reaction times to a go/no-go task) [ 3 , 58 ]. However, some studies showed that video gaming can enhance other cognitive skills and activities involving these cognitive functions. Thus, interpreting the relationship between video gaming and cognitive functions based on structural similarities only is challenging. For example, children’s reading speed and accuracy significantly increased after playing Rayman Raving Rabbids action mini games, which could be explained by the significant enhancement of their visuospatial and phonological processing skills [ 59 , 60 ]. Similarly, playing Unreal Tournament 2004 and Angry Birds significantly enhanced undergraduates’ verbal working memory and mental rotation skills, which could explain the significant improvement in their geometry performance [ 61 ]. Therefore, the benefits of video gaming on cognitive abilities cannot be attributed solely to structural similarities between the games and the cognitive tasks.

Board game practice time was not found to predict any of the assessed cognitive abilities. These findings did not confirm our hypothesis of differential relationships between game-specific play times and cognitive abilities. The significant relationship between board game practice time and cognitive measures was no longer significant when age and education were controlled. Indeed, board game practice time was significantly related to age and education level. More educated participants and those aged 30 to 40 years spent more time playing board games. Thus, board game practice seems to represent a specific category of the population, capturing age and education level. Therefore, it is difficult to confirm the specific effect of board games on cognitive functions [ 4 ]. The already demonstrated effects in the literature may be due solely to the participants’ age and education. Therefore, an interventional study is needed to determine whether cognitive benefits related to board games exist and how much practice time per week would be needed to achieve this effect. These studies could be conducted with younger participants to control for age and education effects.

Our analyses did not reveal a concomitant implication of video games and board games in terms of cognitive performance. Thus, the common features of games, such as that they are rewarding and fun experiences, do not seem to be sufficient to explain cognitive performance. Once again, these findings highlight the importance of identifying the unique game features involved in the association between play and cognitive functions. Further studies will need to consider game specific features and play times to fully understand the cognitive benefits of play.

Limitations and perspectives for future research

Although the current study offers novel findings on the association between play time, game type, and cognitive functions, some limitations must be noted. As a first limitation, the participants completed the study online, which allowed a large sample to be recruited. Although the data were checked, and any incomplete data were excluded, participants’ engagement and motivation can be questioned. Recent studies have noted that online participants are not necessarily inattentive during the tasks, but they are more likely to be distracted (e.g., in using their mobile phones, talking to another person in the room, etc.) [ 62 ]. Thus, a recommendation for ensuring online participants’ motivation and engagement is to provide informative feedback about their performance [ 63 ]; we did this for each task, but it may not have been sufficient.

The second limitation lies in the concerns regarding whether bias existed in the self-reported measures of play time. Some studies have shown that players tend to under-report their time spent playing video games [ 64 ] and to over-report their genre-by-genre gaming time [ 65 ]. To our knowledge, no similar study has assessed bias in the measures of time spent playing board games. Thus, there is currently no way to know whether video game and board game times are biased in the same way. A solution to ensure that play time is accurately measured is to use online measures. In video games, this could correspond to the play time recorded in video games’ servers [ 64 ]. A similar measure could be implemented for board games using diary-based reports or timed play sessions [ 17 ].

A third limitation is the use of a dichotomous game-type approach. Although we considered play time as a continuous variable, playing practice was still defined according to a game-type dichotomy (i.e., video games vs. board games). This approach allowed us to compute cognitive predictors while controlling for game-specific play times and gave first results on the comparison of video and board games’ cognitive implications. However, future studies will be needed to build on our findings according to game subtypes (e.g., action games, strategy games, etc.) and obtain evidence on the game-specific features mediating cognitive enhancement. Finally, given the correlational nature of our analyses, we demonstrated the existence of linear and non-linear relations between overall and game-specific play times and cognitive performance. However, our results cannot account for the causality of the cognitive benefits of play. Thus, future training studies will be necessary to determine the causal relations between play and cognitive abilities. As discussed above, these studies will have to implement training based on different play times and different game features to specify the effects of play on cognitive functions.

Given the global popularity of playing practices and the concerns about intensive gamers’ health, it is important to examine the implications of play time and game type on cognitive functions. Our findings are in line with the recent literature showing that playing is beneficial for cognitive functions; moreover, the findings demonstrate that play time predicts players’ cognitive performance. It seems that video games affect cognitive performance more than board games do, which has never been demonstrated in previous studies. The unique features of this main game type surely explain its specific relationship with cognitive functions. Video games seem to have a greater potential for overall cognitive enhancement because they involve processing various types of information and adapting strategies dynamically and in real time. Future studies on play and cognitive functions will need to account for individual differences among players by considering their play times and the specific features of the games they play.

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21. Donovan T. It’s All a Game: The History of Board Games from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan. New York: Macmillan; 2017.
33. Raven J, Raven JC, Court HH. Raven manual: Section 3. Standard Progressive Matrices. In: Oxford Psychologists Press, Ltd. Raven manual. Oxford Psychologists Press, Ltd. Oxford; 2000.
46. R Core Team. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. 2022. https://www.R-project.org/ .

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Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

Additional research necessary to parse potential benefits and harms of video games on the developing brain.

On Monday, April 10, 2023, a Notice of Retraction and Replacement published for the article featured below . The key findings remain the same. The press release has been updated, in line with the retracted and replacement article, to clarify that attention problems, depression symptoms, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) scores were significantly higher among children who played three hours per day or more compared to children who had never played video games.

A study of nearly 2,000 children found that those who reported playing video games for three hours per day or more performed better on cognitive skills tests involving impulse control and working memory compared to children who had never played video games. Published today in JAMA Network Open , this study analyzed data from the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study , which is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and other entities of the National Institutes of Health.

“This study adds to our growing understanding of the associations between playing video games and brain development,” said NIDA Director Nora Volkow, M.D. “Numerous studies have linked video gaming to behavior and mental health problems. This study suggests that there may also be cognitive benefits associated with this popular pastime, which are worthy of further investigation.”

Although a number of studies have investigated the relationship between video gaming and cognitive behavior, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the associations are not well understood. Only a handful of neuroimaging studies have addressed this topic, and the sample sizes for those studies have been small, with fewer than 80 participants.

To address this research gap, scientists at the University of Vermont, Burlington, analyzed data obtained when children entered the ABCD Study at ages 9 and 10 years old. The research team examined survey, cognitive, and brain imaging data from nearly 2,000 participants from within the bigger study cohort. They separated these children into two groups, those who reported playing no video games at all and those who reported playing video games for three hours per day or more. This threshold was selected as it exceeds the American Academy of Pediatrics screen time guidelines , which recommend that videogaming time be limited to one to two hours per day for older children. For each group, the investigators evaluated the children’s performance on two tasks that reflected their ability to control impulsive behavior and to memorize information, as well as the children’s brain activity while performing the tasks.

The researchers found that the children who reported playing video games for three or more hours per day were faster and more accurate on both cognitive tasks than those who never played. They also observed that the differences in cognitive function observed between the two groups was accompanied by differences in brain activity. Functional MRI brain imaging analyses found that children who played video games for three or more hours per day showed higher brain activity in regions of the brain associated with attention and memory than did those who never played. At the same time, those children who played at least three hours of videogames per day showed more brain activity in frontal brain regions that are associated with more cognitively demanding tasks and less brain activity in brain regions related to vision.

The researchers think these patterns may stem from practicing tasks related to impulse control and memory while playing videogames, which can be cognitively demanding, and that these changes may lead to improved performance on related tasks. Furthermore, the comparatively low activity in visual areas among children who reported playing video games may reflect that this area of the brain may become more efficient at visual processing as a result of repeated practice through video games.

While prior studies have reported associations between video gaming and increases in violence and aggressive behavior, this study did not find that to be the case. Though children who reported playing video games for three or more hours per day scored higher on measures of attention problems, depression symptoms, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) compared to children who played no video games, the researchers found that these mental health and behavioral scores did not reach clinical significance in either group, meaning, they did not meet the thresholds for risk of problem behaviors or clinical symptoms. The authors note that these will be important measures to continue to track and understand as the children mature.

Further, the researchers stress that this cross-sectional study does not allow for cause-and-effect analyses, and that it could be that children who are good at these types of cognitive tasks may choose to play video games. The authors also emphasize that their findings do not mean that children should spend unlimited time on their computers, mobile phones, or TVs, and that the outcomes likely depend largely on the specific activities children engage in. For instance, they hypothesize that the specific genre of video games, such as action-adventure, puzzle solving, sports, or shooting games, may have different effects for neurocognitive development, and this level of specificity on the type of video game played was not assessed by the study.

“While we cannot say whether playing video games regularly caused superior neurocognitive performance, it is an encouraging finding, and one that we must continue to investigate in these children as they transition into adolescence and young adulthood,” said Bader Chaarani, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont and the lead author on the study. “Many parents today are concerned about the effects of video games on their children’s health and development, and as these games continue to proliferate among young people, it is crucial that we better understand both the positive and negative impact that such games may have.”

Through the ABCD Study, researchers will be able to conduct similar analyses for the same children over time into early adulthood, to see if changes in video gaming behavior are linked to changes in cognitive skills, brain activity, behavior, and mental health. The longitudinal study design and comprehensive data set will also enable them to better account for various other factors in the children’s families and environment that may influence their cognitive and behavioral development, such as exercise, sleep quality, and other influences.

The ABCD Study, the largest of its kind in the United States, is tracking nearly 12,000 youth as they grow into young adults. Investigators regularly measure participants’ brain structure and activity using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and collect psychological, environmental, and cognitive information, as well as biological samples. The goal of the study is to understand the factors that influence brain, cognitive, and social-emotional development, to inform the development of interventions to enhance a young person’s life trajectory.

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study and ABCD Study are registered service marks and trademarks, respectively, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

About the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA): NIDA is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to inform policy, improve practice, and advance addiction science. For more information about NIDA and its programs, visit www.nida.nih.gov .

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov .

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health ®

B Chaarani, et al. Association of video gaming with cognitive performance among children . JAMA Open Network. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.35721 (2022).

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Published: 13 March 2018

Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study

Simone Kühn 1 , 2 ,
Dimitrij Tycho Kugler 2 ,
Katharina Schmalen 1 ,
Markus Weichenberger 1 ,
Charlotte Witt 1 &
Jürgen Gallinat 2

Molecular Psychiatry volume 24 , pages 1220–1234 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Neuroscience

It is a widespread concern that violent video games promote aggression, reduce pro-social behaviour, increase impulsivity and interfere with cognition as well as mood in its players. Previous experimental studies have focussed on short-term effects of violent video gameplay on aggression, yet there are reasons to believe that these effects are mostly the result of priming. In contrast, the present study is the first to investigate the effects of long-term violent video gameplay using a large battery of tests spanning questionnaires, behavioural measures of aggression, sexist attitudes, empathy and interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs (such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness, risk taking, delay discounting), mental health (depressivity, anxiety) as well as executive control functions, before and after 2 months of gameplay. Our participants played the violent video game Grand Theft Auto V, the non-violent video game The Sims 3 or no game at all for 2 months on a daily basis. No significant changes were observed, neither when comparing the group playing a violent video game to a group playing a non-violent game, nor to a passive control group. Also, no effects were observed between baseline and posttest directly after the intervention, nor between baseline and a follow-up assessment 2 months after the intervention period had ended. The present results thus provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games in adults and will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective on the effects of violent video gaming.

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The concern that violent video games may promote aggression or reduce empathy in its players is pervasive and given the popularity of these games their psychological impact is an urgent issue for society at large. Contrary to the custom, this topic has also been passionately debated in the scientific literature. One research camp has strongly argued that violent video games increase aggression in its players [ 1 , 2 ], whereas the other camp [ 3 , 4 ] repeatedly concluded that the effects are minimal at best, if not absent. Importantly, it appears that these fundamental inconsistencies cannot be attributed to differences in research methodology since even meta-analyses, with the goal to integrate the results of all prior studies on the topic of aggression caused by video games led to disparate conclusions [ 2 , 3 ]. These meta-analyses had a strong focus on children, and one of them [ 2 ] reported a marginal age effect suggesting that children might be even more susceptible to violent video game effects.

To unravel this topic of research, we designed a randomised controlled trial on adults to draw causal conclusions on the influence of video games on aggression. At present, almost all experimental studies targeting the effects of violent video games on aggression and/or empathy focussed on the effects of short-term video gameplay. In these studies the duration for which participants were instructed to play the games ranged from 4 min to maximally 2 h (mean = 22 min, median = 15 min, when considering all experimental studies reviewed in two of the recent major meta-analyses in the field [ 3 , 5 ]) and most frequently the effects of video gaming have been tested directly after gameplay.

It has been suggested that the effects of studies focussing on consequences of short-term video gameplay (mostly conducted on college student populations) are mainly the result of priming effects, meaning that exposure to violent content increases the accessibility of aggressive thoughts and affect when participants are in the immediate situation [ 6 ]. However, above and beyond this the General Aggression Model (GAM, [ 7 ]) assumes that repeatedly primed thoughts and feelings influence the perception of ongoing events and therewith elicits aggressive behaviour as a long-term effect. We think that priming effects are interesting and worthwhile exploring, but in contrast to the notion of the GAM our reading of the literature is that priming effects are short-lived (suggested to only last for <5 min and may potentially reverse after that time [ 8 ]). Priming effects should therefore only play a role in very close temporal proximity to gameplay. Moreover, there are a multitude of studies on college students that have failed to replicate priming effects [ 9 , 10 , 11 ] and associated predictions of the so-called GAM such as a desensitisation against violent content [ 12 , 13 , 14 ] in adolescents and college students or a decrease of empathy [ 15 ] and pro-social behaviour [ 16 , 17 ] as a result of playing violent video games.

However, in our view the question that society is actually interested in is not: “Are people more aggressive after having played violent video games for a few minutes? And are these people more aggressive minutes after gameplay ended?”, but rather “What are the effects of frequent, habitual violent video game playing? And for how long do these effects persist (not in the range of minutes but rather weeks and months)?” For this reason studies are needed in which participants are trained over longer periods of time, tested after a longer delay after acute playing and tested with broader batteries assessing aggression but also other relevant domains such as empathy as well as mood and cognition. Moreover, long-term follow-up assessments are needed to demonstrate long-term effects of frequent violent video gameplay. To fill this gap, we set out to expose adult participants to two different types of video games for a period of 2 months and investigate changes in measures of various constructs of interest at least one day after the last gaming session and test them once more 2 months after the end of the gameplay intervention. In contrast to the GAM, we hypothesised no increases of aggression or decreases in pro-social behaviour even after long-term exposure to a violent video game due to our reasoning that priming effects of violent video games are short-lived and should therefore not influence measures of aggression if they are not measured directly after acute gaming. In the present study, we assessed potential changes in the following domains: behavioural as well as questionnaire measures of aggression, empathy and interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs (such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness, risk taking, delay discounting), and depressivity and anxiety as well as executive control functions. As the effects on aggression and pro-social behaviour were the core targets of the present study, we implemented multiple tests for these domains. This broad range of domains with its wide coverage and the longitudinal nature of the study design enabled us to draw more general conclusions regarding the causal effects of violent video games.

Materials and methods

Participants.

Ninety healthy participants (mean age = 28 years, SD = 7.3, range: 18–45, 48 females) were recruited by means of flyers and internet advertisements. The sample consisted of college students as well as of participants from the general community. The advertisement mentioned that we were recruiting for a longitudinal study on video gaming, but did not mention that we would offer an intervention or that we were expecting training effects. Participants were randomly assigned to the three groups ruling out self-selection effects. The sample size was based on estimates from a previous study with a similar design [ 18 ]. After complete description of the study, the participants’ informed written consent was obtained. The local ethics committee of the Charité University Clinic, Germany, approved of the study. We included participants that reported little, preferably no video game usage in the past 6 months (none of the participants ever played the game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA) or Sims 3 in any of its versions before). We excluded participants with psychological or neurological problems. The participants received financial compensation for the testing sessions (200 Euros) and performance-dependent additional payment for two behavioural tasks detailed below, but received no money for the training itself.

Training procedure

The violent video game group (5 participants dropped out between pre- and posttest, resulting in a group of n = 25, mean age = 26.6 years, SD = 6.0, 14 females) played the game Grand Theft Auto V on a Playstation 3 console over a period of 8 weeks. The active control group played the non-violent video game Sims 3 on the same console (6 participants dropped out, resulting in a group of n = 24, mean age = 25.8 years, SD = 6.8, 12 females). The passive control group (2 participants dropped out, resulting in a group of n = 28, mean age = 30.9 years, SD = 8.4, 12 females) was not given a gaming console and had no task but underwent the same testing procedure as the two other groups. The passive control group was not aware of the fact that they were part of a control group to prevent self-training attempts. The experimenters testing the participants were blind to group membership, but we were unable to prevent participants from talking about the game during testing, which in some cases lead to an unblinding of experimental condition. Both training groups were instructed to play the game for at least 30 min a day. Participants were only reimbursed for the sessions in which they came to the lab. Our previous research suggests that the perceived fun in gaming was positively associated with training outcome [ 18 ] and we speculated that enforcing training sessions through payment would impair motivation and thus diminish the potential effect of the intervention. Participants underwent a testing session before (baseline) and after the training period of 2 months (posttest 1) as well as a follow-up testing sessions 2 months after the training period (posttest 2).

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA)

GTA is an action-adventure video game situated in a fictional highly violent game world in which players are rewarded for their use of violence as a means to advance in the game. The single-player story follows three criminals and their efforts to commit heists while under pressure from a government agency. The gameplay focuses on an open world (sandbox game) where the player can choose between different behaviours. The game also allows the player to engage in various side activities, such as action-adventure, driving, third-person shooting, occasional role-playing, stealth and racing elements. The open world design lets players freely roam around the fictional world so that gamers could in principle decide not to commit violent acts.

The Sims 3 (Sims)

Sims is a life simulation game and also classified as a sandbox game because it lacks clearly defined goals. The player creates virtual individuals called “Sims”, and customises their appearance, their personalities and places them in a home, directs their moods, satisfies their desires and accompanies them in their daily activities and by becoming part of a social network. It offers opportunities, which the player may choose to pursue or to refuse, similar as GTA but is generally considered as a pro-social and clearly non-violent game.

Assessment battery

To assess aggression and associated constructs we used the following questionnaires: Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire [ 19 ], State Hostility Scale [ 20 ], Updated Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale [ 21 , 22 ], Moral Disengagement Scale [ 23 , 24 ], the Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Test [ 25 , 26 ] and a so-called World View Measure [ 27 ]. All of these measures have previously been used in research investigating the effects of violent video gameplay, however, the first two most prominently. Additionally, behavioural measures of aggression were used: a Word Completion Task, a Lexical Decision Task [ 28 ] and the Delay frustration task [ 29 ] (an inter-correlation matrix is depicted in Supplementary Figure 1 1). From these behavioural measures, the first two were previously used in research on the effects of violent video gameplay. To assess variables that have been related to the construct of impulsivity, we used the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale [ 30 ] and the Boredom Propensity Scale [ 31 ] as well as tasks assessing risk taking and delay discounting behaviourally, namely the Balloon Analogue Risk Task [ 32 ] and a Delay-Discounting Task [ 33 ]. To quantify pro-social behaviour, we employed: Interpersonal Reactivity Index [ 34 ] (frequently used in research on the effects of violent video gameplay), Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale [ 35 ], Reading the Mind in the Eyes test [ 36 ], Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire [ 37 ] and Richardson Conflict Response Questionnaire [ 38 ]. To assess depressivity and anxiety, which has previously been associated with intense video game playing [ 39 ], we used Beck Depression Inventory [ 40 ] and State Trait Anxiety Inventory [ 41 ]. To characterise executive control function, we used a Stop Signal Task [ 42 ], a Multi-Source Interference Task [ 43 ] and a Task Switching Task [ 44 ] which have all been previously used to assess effects of video gameplay. More details on all instruments used can be found in the Supplementary Material.

Data analysis

On the basis of the research question whether violent video game playing enhances aggression and reduces empathy, the focus of the present analysis was on time by group interactions. We conducted these interaction analyses separately, comparing the violent video game group against the active control group (GTA vs. Sims) and separately against the passive control group (GTA vs. Controls) that did not receive any intervention and separately for the potential changes during the intervention period (baseline vs. posttest 1) and to test for potential long-term changes (baseline vs. posttest 2). We employed classical frequentist statistics running a repeated-measures ANOVA controlling for the covariates sex and age.

Since we collected 52 separate outcome variables and conduced four different tests with each (GTA vs. Sims, GTA vs. Controls, crossed with baseline vs. posttest 1, baseline vs. posttest 2), we had to conduct 52 × 4 = 208 frequentist statistical tests. Setting the alpha value to 0.05 means that by pure chance about 10.4 analyses should become significant. To account for this multiple testing problem and the associated alpha inflation, we conducted a Bonferroni correction. According to Bonferroni, the critical value for the entire set of n tests is set to an alpha value of 0.05 by taking alpha/ n = 0.00024.

Since the Bonferroni correction has sometimes been criticised as overly conservative, we conducted false discovery rate (FDR) correction [ 45 ]. FDR correction also determines adjusted p -values for each test, however, it controls only for the number of false discoveries in those tests that result in a discovery (namely a significant result).

Moreover, we tested for group differences at the baseline assessment using independent t -tests, since those may hamper the interpretation of significant interactions between group and time that we were primarily interested in.

Since the frequentist framework does not enable to evaluate whether the observed null effect of the hypothesised interaction is indicative of the absence of a relation between violent video gaming and our dependent variables, the amount of evidence in favour of the null hypothesis has been tested using a Bayesian framework. Within the Bayesian framework both the evidence in favour of the null and the alternative hypothesis are directly computed based on the observed data, giving rise to the possibility of comparing the two. We conducted Bayesian repeated-measures ANOVAs comparing the model in favour of the null and the model in favour of the alternative hypothesis resulting in a Bayes factor (BF) using Bayesian Information criteria [ 46 ]. The BF 01 suggests how much more likely the data is to occur under the null hypothesis. All analyses were performed using the JASP software package ( https://jasp-stats.org ).

Sex distribution in the present study did not differ across the groups ( χ 2 p -value > 0.414). However, due to the fact that differences between males and females have been observed in terms of aggression and empathy [ 47 ], we present analyses controlling for sex. Since our random assignment to the three groups did result in significant age differences between groups, with the passive control group being significantly older than the GTA ( t (51) = −2.10, p = 0.041) and the Sims group ( t (50) = −2.38, p = 0.021), we also controlled for age.

The participants in the violent video game group played on average 35 h and the non-violent video game group 32 h spread out across the 8 weeks interval (with no significant group difference p = 0.48).

To test whether participants assigned to the violent GTA game show emotional, cognitive and behavioural changes, we present the results of repeated-measure ANOVA time x group interaction analyses separately for GTA vs. Sims and GTA vs. Controls (Tables 1 – 3 ). Moreover, we split the analyses according to the time domain into effects from baseline assessment to posttest 1 (Table 2 ) and effects from baseline assessment to posttest 2 (Table 3 ) to capture more long-lasting or evolving effects. In addition to the statistical test values, we report partial omega squared ( ω 2 ) as an effect size measure. Next to the classical frequentist statistics, we report the results of a Bayesian statistical approach, namely BF 01 , the likelihood with which the data is to occur under the null hypothesis that there is no significant time × group interaction. In Table 2 , we report the presence of significant group differences at baseline in the right most column.

Since we conducted 208 separate frequentist tests we expected 10.4 significant effects simply by chance when setting the alpha value to 0.05. In fact we found only eight significant time × group interactions (these are marked with an asterisk in Tables 2 and 3 ).

When applying a conservative Bonferroni correction, none of those tests survive the corrected threshold of p < 0.00024. Neither does any test survive the more lenient FDR correction. The arithmetic mean of the frequentist test statistics likewise shows that on average no significant effect was found (bottom rows in Tables 2 and 3 ).

In line with the findings from a frequentist approach, the harmonic mean of the Bayesian factor BF 01 is consistently above one but not very far from one. This likewise suggests that there is very likely no interaction between group × time and therewith no detrimental effects of the violent video game GTA in the domains tested. The evidence in favour of the null hypothesis based on the Bayes factor is not massive, but clearly above 1. Some of the harmonic means are above 1.6 and constitute substantial evidence [ 48 ]. However, the harmonic mean has been criticised as unstable. Owing to the fact that the sum is dominated by occasional small terms in the likelihood, one may underestimate the actual evidence in favour of the null hypothesis [ 49 ].

To test the sensitivity of the present study to detect relevant effects we computed the effect size that we would have been able to detect. The information we used consisted of alpha error probability = 0.05, power = 0.95, our sample size, number of groups and of measurement occasions and correlation between the repeated measures at posttest 1 and posttest 2 (average r = 0.68). According to G*Power [ 50 ], we could detect small effect sizes of f = 0.16 (equals η 2 = 0.025 and r = 0.16) in each separate test. When accounting for the conservative Bonferroni-corrected p -value of 0.00024, still a medium effect size of f = 0.23 (equals η 2 = 0.05 and r = 0.22) would have been detectable. A meta-analysis by Anderson [ 2 ] reported an average effects size of r = 0.18 for experimental studies testing for aggressive behaviour and another by Greitmeyer [ 5 ] reported average effect sizes of r = 0.19, 0.25 and 0.17 for effects of violent games on aggressive behaviour, cognition and affect, all of which should have been detectable at least before multiple test correction.

Within the scope of the present study we tested the potential effects of playing the violent video game GTA V for 2 months against an active control group that played the non-violent, rather pro-social life simulation game The Sims 3 and a passive control group. Participants were tested before and after the long-term intervention and at a follow-up appointment 2 months later. Although we used a comprehensive test battery consisting of questionnaires and computerised behavioural tests assessing aggression, impulsivity-related constructs, mood, anxiety, empathy, interpersonal competencies and executive control functions, we did not find relevant negative effects in response to violent video game playing. In fact, only three tests of the 208 statistical tests performed showed a significant interaction pattern that would be in line with this hypothesis. Since at least ten significant effects would be expected purely by chance, we conclude that there were no detrimental effects of violent video gameplay.

This finding stands in contrast to some experimental studies, in which short-term effects of violent video game exposure have been investigated and where increases in aggressive thoughts and affect as well as decreases in helping behaviour have been observed [ 1 ]. However, these effects of violent video gaming on aggressiveness—if present at all (see above)—seem to be rather short-lived, potentially lasting <15 min [ 8 , 51 ]. In addition, these short-term effects of video gaming are far from consistent as multiple studies fail to demonstrate or replicate them [ 16 , 17 ]. This may in part be due to problems, that are very prominent in this field of research, namely that the outcome measures of aggression and pro-social behaviour, are poorly standardised, do not easily generalise to real-life behaviour and may have lead to selective reporting of the results [ 3 ]. We tried to address these concerns by including a large set of outcome measures that were mostly inspired by previous studies demonstrating effects of short-term violent video gameplay on aggressive behaviour and thoughts, that we report exhaustively.

Since effects observed only for a few minutes after short sessions of video gaming are not representative of what society at large is actually interested in, namely how habitual violent video gameplay affects behaviour on a more long-term basis, studies employing longer training intervals are highly relevant. Two previous studies have employed longer training intervals. In an online study, participants with a broad age range (14–68 years) have been trained in a violent video game for 4 weeks [ 52 ]. In comparison to a passive control group no changes were observed, neither in aggression-related beliefs, nor in aggressive social interactions assessed by means of two questions. In a more recent study, participants played a previous version of GTA for 12 h spread across 3 weeks [ 53 ]. Participants were compared to a passive control group using the Buss–Perry aggression questionnaire, a questionnaire assessing impulsive or reactive aggression, attitude towards violence, and empathy. The authors only report a limited increase in pro-violent attitude. Unfortunately, this study only assessed posttest measures, which precludes the assessment of actual changes caused by the game intervention.

The present study goes beyond these studies by showing that 2 months of violent video gameplay does neither lead to any significant negative effects in a broad assessment battery administered directly after the intervention nor at a follow-up assessment 2 months after the intervention. The fact that we assessed multiple domains, not finding an effect in any of them, makes the present study the most comprehensive in the field. Our battery included self-report instruments on aggression (Buss–Perry aggression questionnaire, State Hostility scale, Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance scale, Moral Disengagement scale, World View Measure and Rosenzweig Picture Frustration test) as well as computer-based tests measuring aggressive behaviour such as the delay frustration task and measuring the availability of aggressive words using the word completion test and a lexical decision task. Moreover, we assessed impulse-related concepts such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness and associated behavioural measures such as the computerised Balloon analogue risk task, and delay discounting. Four scales assessing empathy and interpersonal competence scales, including the reading the mind in the eyes test revealed no effects of violent video gameplay. Neither did we find any effects on depressivity (Becks depression inventory) nor anxiety measured as a state as well as a trait. This is an important point, since several studies reported higher rates of depressivity and anxiety in populations of habitual video gamers [ 54 , 55 ]. Last but not least, our results revealed also no substantial changes in executive control tasks performance, neither in the Stop signal task, the Multi-source interference task or a Task switching task. Previous studies have shown higher performance of habitual action video gamers in executive tasks such as task switching [ 56 , 57 , 58 ] and another study suggests that training with action video games improves task performance that relates to executive functions [ 59 ], however, these associations were not confirmed by a meta-analysis in the field [ 60 ]. The absence of changes in the stop signal task fits well with previous studies that likewise revealed no difference between in habitual action video gamers and controls in terms of action inhibition [ 61 , 62 ]. Although GTA does not qualify as a classical first-person shooter as most of the previously tested action video games, it is classified as an action-adventure game and shares multiple features with those action video games previously related to increases in executive function, including the need for hand–eye coordination and fast reaction times.

Taken together, the findings of the present study show that an extensive game intervention over the course of 2 months did not reveal any specific changes in aggression, empathy, interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs, depressivity, anxiety or executive control functions; neither in comparison to an active control group that played a non-violent video game nor to a passive control group. We observed no effects when comparing a baseline and a post-training assessment, nor when focussing on more long-term effects between baseline and a follow-up interval 2 months after the participants stopped training. To our knowledge, the present study employed the most comprehensive test battery spanning a multitude of domains in which changes due to violent video games may have been expected. Therefore the present results provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games. This debate has mostly been informed by studies showing short-term effects of violent video games when tests were administered immediately after a short playtime of a few minutes; effects that may in large be caused by short-lived priming effects that vanish after minutes. The presented results will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective of the real-life effects of violent video gaming. However, future research is needed to demonstrate the absence of effects of violent video gameplay in children.

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SK has been funded by a Heisenberg grant from the German Science Foundation (DFG KU 3322/1-1, SFB 936/C7), the European Union (ERC-2016-StG-Self-Control-677804) and a Fellowship from the Jacobs Foundation (JRF 2016–2018).

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Kühn, S., Kugler, D., Schmalen, K. et al. Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study. Mol Psychiatry 24 , 1220–1234 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-018-0031-7

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The association between video gaming and psychological functioning.

$\r\nJuliane M. von der Heiden*$

1 Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany
2 Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Center, Mainz, Germany

Video gaming is an extremely popular leisure-time activity with more than two billion users worldwide ( Newzoo, 2017 ). However, the media as well as professionals have underscored the potential dangers of excessive video gaming. With the present research, we aimed to shed light on the relation between video gaming and gamers’ psychological functioning. Questionnaires on personality and psychological health as well as video gaming habits were administered to 2,734 individuals (2,377 male, 357 female, M age = 23.06, SD age = 5.91). Results revealed a medium-sized negative correlation between problematic video gaming and psychological functioning with regard to psychological symptoms, affectivity, coping, and self-esteem. Moreover, gamers’ reasons for playing and their preferred game genres were differentially related to psychological functioning with the most notable findings for distraction-motivated players as well as action game players. Future studies are needed to examine whether these psychological health risks reflect the causes or consequences of video gaming.

Introduction

Video gaming is a very popular leisure activity among adults ( Pew Research Center, 2018 ). The amount of time spent playing video games has increased steadily, from 5.1 h/week in 2011 to 6.5 h/week in 2017 ( The Nielsen Company, 2017 ). Video gaming is known to have some benefits such as improving focus, multitasking, and working memory, but it may also come with costs when it is used heavily. By spending a predominant part of the day gaming, excessive video gamers are at risk of showing lower educational and career attainment, problems with peers, and lower social skills ( Mihara and Higuchi, 2017 ). On the one hand, video game use is widespread, and it may come with certain precursors as well as consequences. On the other hand, little is known about the relations between various video gaming habits and psychological functioning. This study aims to shed light on these important relations using a large sample.

A video game is defined as “a game which we play thanks to an audiovisual apparatus and which can be based on a story” ( Esposito, 2005 ). In the last few years, the amount of scientific research devoted to video game playing has increased (e.g., Ferguson, 2015 ; Calvert et al., 2017 ; Hamari and Keronen, 2017 ). Most scientific studies in this area of research have focused on the extent of video game play and its diverse correlates. While some researchers have emphasized the benefits of game playing and even suggested a therapeutic use of video games ( Primack et al., 2012 ; Granic et al., 2014 ; Colder Carras et al., 2018 ), others have been intrigued by its potential dangers ( Anderson et al., 2010 ; Müller and Wölfling, 2017 ).

Parents and professionals may be worried about their excessively playing children being “addicted.” However, problematic and potentially addictive video game use goes beyond the extent of playing (in hours per week; Skoric et al., 2009 ). It also includes such issues as craving, loss of control, and negative consequences of excessive gaming. While it is still a matter of debate whether problematic video game play should be considered a behavioral addiction , its status as a mental disorder has been clarified since the release of the DSM-5 in 2013. In the DSM-5, the American Psychiatric Association (2013) defined Internet Gaming Disorder with diagnostic criteria closely related to Gambling Disorder. Generally, this decision has been supported by many researchers (e.g., Petry et al., 2014 ) but has also caused controversies. Researchers have criticized the selection of diagnostic criteria and the vague definition of the Internet Gaming Disorder construct, which excludes offline games from being related to addictive use (e.g., Griffiths et al., 2016 ; Bean et al., 2017 ).

Several studies, literature reviews, and meta-analyses have focused on the correlates of problematic video gaming, usually assessed as a continuum with addiction marking the upper end of the scale (e.g., Ferguson et al., 2011 ; Kuss and Griffiths, 2012 ). The degree of addictive video game use has been found to be related to personality traits such as low self-esteem ( Ko et al., 2005 ) and low self-efficacy ( Jeong and Kim, 2011 ), anxiety, and aggression ( Mehroof and Griffiths, 2010 ), and even to clinical symptoms of depression and anxiety disorders ( Wang et al., 2018 ). Potential consequences of video game use have been identified as well, such as a lack of real-life friends ( Kowert et al., 2014a ), stress and maladaptive coping ( Milani et al., 2018 ), lower psychosocial well-being and loneliness ( Lemmens et al., 2011 ), psychosomatic problems ( Müller et al., 2015 ; Milani et al., 2018 ), and decreased academic achievement ( Chiu et al., 2004 ; Gentile, 2009 ). Effect sizes have varied widely across studies ( Ferguson et al., 2011 ). There seem to be sex and age differences with regard to video gaming behavior: potentially problematic video gaming was found to be more likely among males than females (e.g., Greenberg et al., 2010 ; Estévez et al., 2017 ), and among younger gamers ( Rehbein et al., 2016 ).

In addition to looking at problematic video game use and its relation to psychological functioning, it is relevant to also focus on why individuals play video games. Players use video games for very different reasons ( Ryan et al., 2006 ; Yee, 2006 ) such as to distract themselves from daily hassles or because they enjoy the social relationships they have developed in the virtual world. Potentially problematic video gaming has been found to be related to various reasons for playing such as coping and escape ( Hussain and Griffiths, 2009 ; Schneider et al., 2018 ), socialization ( Laconi et al., 2017 ), and personal satisfaction ( Ng and Wiemer-Hastings, 2005 ). Coping ( Laconi et al., 2017 ), social interaction, and competition were among the main reasons for gaming among males but not among females ( Lucas and Sherry, 2004 ). Mixed results emerged concerning age differences ( Greenberg et al., 2010 ), but especially younger gamers seemed to be motivated for video gaming by social interactions ( Hilgard et al., 2013 ). However, so far it remains unclear to what extent people’s various reasons for playing video games are differentially related to their psychological functioning.

Besides investigating the links between potentially problematic video game use and psychological functioning as well as between reasons for playing video games and psychological functioning, it is relevant to also look at which game genres individuals prefer. Correlates of preferences for certain game genres (e.g., simulation, strategy, action, role-playing) are cognitive enhancement ( Dobrowolski et al., 2015 ; Bediou et al., 2018 ), but also the amount of time spent playing ( Lemmens and Hendriks, 2016 ; Rehbein et al., 2016 ) and psychopathological symptoms ( Laconi et al., 2017 ). Males were shown to prefer action and strategy games, whereas females showed a preference for games of skill ( Scharkow et al., 2015 ; Rehbein et al., 2016 ). Younger gamers seemed to prefer action games, older players more so games of skill ( Scharkow et al., 2015 ). However, it is not yet understood to what extent preferences for certain video game genres are differentially related to psychological functioning.

Typically, research has focused merely on violent video games (e.g., Anderson and Bushman, 2001 ; Elson and Ferguson, 2014 ) or one specific game within one specific game genre (frequently World of Warcraft; Graham and Gosling, 2013 ; Visser et al., 2013 ; Herodotou et al., 2014 ), thereby neglecting the variety of possible gaming habits across various game genres.

In the present study, our objective was to examine the relation between video gaming and psychological functioning in a fine-grained manner. For this purpose, we examined psychological functioning by employing various variables such as psychological symptoms, coping strategies, and social support. Likewise, we assessed video gaming in a similarly detailed way, ranging from (a) problematic video game use, (b) the reasons for playing, to (c) the preferred game genres. This strategy prevented us from making potentially invalid generalizations about video gaming in general and allowed us to examine the spectrum of gaming habits and the respective relations between such habits and a diverse set of variables representing psychological functioning.

Playing video games excessively should be appealing to individuals with poor psychological functioning because games allow people to avoid their everyday problems and instead immerse themselves in another environment ( Taquet et al., 2017 ). Moreover, video games offer people a chance to connect with other people socially despite any more or less evident psychological problems they may have ( Kowert et al., 2014b ; Mazurek et al., 2015 ). On the other hand, potentially problematic video game use may also lead to psychological problems because it reduces the amount of time and the number of opportunities gamers have to practice real-life behavior ( Gentile, 2009 ). Thus, we expected to find a negative correlation between problematic video gaming and variables representing psychological functioning such that we expected more potentially problematic video game use to be related to dysfunctional coping strategies ( Wood and Griffith, 2007 ), negative affectivity ( Mathiak et al., 2011 ), and poor school performance ( Mihara and Higuchi, 2017 ). Moreover, we expected to find differential correlates of people’s reasons for playing video games and their psychological functioning: Playing for escape-oriented reasons such as distraction should go along with diverse indices of poor psychological functioning ( Király et al., 2015 ), whereas playing for gain-oriented reasons such as the storyline or the social connections in the game should be related to adequate psychological functioning ( Longman et al., 2009 ). Also, we expected to find people’s preferred game genres (e.g., strategy, action) to be differentially related to their psychological functioning ( Park et al., 2016 ). Finally, we aimed to shed light on the unique contribution of each measure of psychological functioning to the prediction of problematic video game use.

Materials and Methods

Participants 1.

A total of N = 2,891 individuals (2,421 male, 470 female) with a mean age of 23.17 years ( SD = 5.99, Range: 13–65) participated in our study. Of these participants, N = 2,734 (95%) confirmed their use of video games and were thus included in further analyses (2,377 male, 357 female, with a mean age of 23.06 years; SD = 5.91, Range: 13–65). The distribution of participants with regard to sex and age mirrors the findings of past research with males and younger individuals being more likely to play video games (e.g., Griffiths et al., 2004 ). Participants’ place of residence was Germany.

Procedure and Instruments 2

We posted links to our online questionnaire on various online forums as well as on popular online game sites. To achieve heterogeneity of the sample, no exclusion criteria other than having access to the Internet and understanding German were specified. As an incentive to participate in the study, four vouchers of 50€ were raffled.

Video Gaming

Potentially problematic video game use.

The AICA-S, the Scale for the Assessment of Internet and Computer game Addiction ( Wölfling et al., 2016 ), was used to assess participants’ gaming behavior with regard to potential problematic use. Based on the DSM criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder (tolerance, craving, loss of control, emotion regulation, withdrawal, and unsuccessful attempts to cut back), this standardized self-report scale consists of 15 items usually with a five-point scale ranging from 1 ( never ) to 5 ( very often ). The final score (Min = 0, Max = 27 points) is computed using weighted scoring (items with an item-total correlation > 0.55 in the norm sample are weighted double; Wölfling et al., 2011 ). The AICA-S score can be used to differentiate between regular (0–6.5 points) and problematic use of video games (7–13 points: abuse; 13.5–27 points: addiction). In our sample, N = 2,265 (83%) were identified as regular gamers, and N = 469 (17%) as problematic gamers. We used the AICA-S as a continuous variable for all further analyses ( M = 3.98, SD = 3.22, Range: 0–24). The instrument has been validated for different age groups in the general population and in clinical samples ( Müller et al., 2014a , 2019 , but note small sample size; Müller et al., 2014b ). Cronbach’s alpha was α = 0.70. As expected, the AICA-S score was correlated with male sex ( r = 0.17 ∗∗∗ ) and age ( r = –0.15 ∗∗∗ ). On average, participants played video games for M = 4.09 hours per weekday ( SD = 4.44, Range: 0–24), and M = 4.21 h per day at the weekend ( SD = 2.99, Range: 0–24).

Reasons for playing

Gamers indicated how often they played video games for certain reasons. They rated each of 10 reasons separately on Likert scales ranging from 1 ( never ) to 4 ( very often ). The most prevalent reasons were relaxation ( M = 2.96, SD = 0.91), amusement ( M = 2.94, SD = 0.85), and because of the storyline ( M = 2.67, SD = 1.10).

Game genres

Gamers were asked how often they usually played various video game subgenres such as first-person shooter, round-based strategy, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), life simulations, and others. Ratings were made on Likert scales ranging from 1 ( never ) to 4 ( very often ). Using Apperley’s (2006) classification of game genres, we categorized the subgenres into the main genres action ( M = 2.54, SD = 0.84), strategy ( M = 2.13, SD = 0.80), role-playing ( M = 2.01, SD = 0.73), and simulation ( M = 1.58, SD = 0.44). A cluster for unclassified subgenres ( M = 1.54, SD = 0.39) was added to additionally account for such subgenres as jump’n’runs and games of skill. Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations for all measures (including sex and age) are presented in Supplementary Tables S1–S4 .

Psychological Functioning

Participants provided ratings of their psychological functioning on the following constructs:

General psychopathology

The SCL-K-9 ( Klaghofer and Brähler, 2001 ), a short version of the SCL-90-R ( Derogatis, 1975 ), was administered to assess participants’ subjective impairment regarding psychological symptoms (somatization, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism). The SCL-K-9 score is strongly correlated with the original score of the SCL-90-R ( r = 0.93). The 9 items were answered on 5-point Likert-type scales ranging from 1 ( do not agree at all ) to 5 ( agree completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was satisfactory (α = 0.77).

We assessed 10 coping strategies with the Brief COPE ( Carver, 1997 ; German version by Knoll et al., 2005 ), which is the shorter version of the COPE ( Carver et al., 1989 ): self-distraction, denial, substance use, venting, self-blame, behavioral disengagement, acceptance, active coping, planning, and positive reframing. The two items per subscale were administered on 5-point Likert-type scales ranging from 1 ( never ) to 5 ( very often ). Intercorrelations of the two items per subscale ranged from r = 0.32, p < 0.001 for positive reframing to r = 0.78, p < 0.001 for substance use (with one exception: r = -0.05, p = 0.01 for self-distraction).

We measured general affect as a trait and affect during video gaming as a state using the German version ( Krohne et al., 1996 ) of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson et al., 1988 ). On a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 5 ( completely ), participants rated the intensity of 20 adjectives. Cronbach’s alpha was α = 0.78 for general positive affect, α = 0.83 for general negative affect, α = 0.85 for positive affect while playing, and α = 0.83 for negative affect while playing.

The measure for the assessment of shyness in adults ( Asendorpf, 1997 ) consists of 5 items that were answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 5 ( completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was excellent (α = 0.86).

We administered the German version ( Elbing, 1991 ) of the NYU Loneliness Scale ( Rubenstein and Shaver, 1982 ). The 4 items were answered on 5- to 6-point Likert-type scales. Cronbach’s alpha was satisfactory (α = 0.79).

Preference for solitude

A 10-item measure of preference for solitude ( Nestler et al., 2011 ) was answered on a 6-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 6 ( completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was excellent (α = 0.86).

Life satisfaction

Participants answered a one-item life satisfaction measure on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 4 ( completely ).

Self-esteem

We administered the German version ( von Collani and Herzberg, 2003 ) of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1979 ). The 10 items were answered on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 4 ( completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was excellent (α = 0.88).

Self-efficacy

We administered a 10-item generalized self-efficacy scale ( Schwarzer and Jerusalem, 1995 ), which was answered on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 4 ( completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was excellent (α = 0.86).

Social support and friends

We administered the perceived available social support subscale from the Berlin Social Support Scales (BSSS; Schwarzer and Schulz, 2003 ). The 8 items were answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 5 ( completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was excellent (α = 0.94). Participants indicated how many offline friends and offline acquaintances they had ( r = 0.44, p < 0.001) as well as how many online friends and online acquaintances they had ( r = 0.33, p < 0.001). Due to left-skewed distributions, we logarithmized the data before aggregation.

Participants reported their grade point average. German grades are assessed on a scale that ranges from 1 ( excellent ) to 6 ( insufficient ). Thus, higher scores indicate worse grades.

Participants further reported their sex and age. Both were used as control variables in further analyses.

In a first step, we computed zero-order correlations between the video gaming variables and the measures of psychological functioning. In a second step, we computed partial correlations in which we controlled for sex and age because past research has repeatedly shown that sex and age are correlated with both video gaming ( Homer et al., 2012 ; Mihara and Higuchi, 2017 ) and psychological functioning ( Kessler et al., 2007 ; Nolen-Hoeksema, 2012 ). Finally, we explored the unique contribution of each measure of psychological functioning to the prediction of potentially problematic video gaming. Therefore, we computed regressions with potentially problematic video gaming as the dependent variable and sex, age, and the measures of psychological functioning as predictors (entered simultaneously into the regression equation). By employing this procedure, we were able to determine the effect that each variable had over and above the other ones. For instance, we could identify whether general psychopathology was predictive of potentially problematic video game use when the influence of all other variables (e.g., shyness, loneliness, and others) was held constant.

Additionally, we included analyses regarding sex and age differences in the link between video gaming and psychological functioning. Since we collected a self-selected sample where different sexes and age groups were not represented equally, our findings are only preliminary, but may stimulate future research.

Potentially Problematic Video Game Use and Psychological Functioning

First, we examined whether potentially problematic video game use was related to various psychological functioning variables. As can be seen in Table 1 , the results for the zero-order correlations were similar to those for the partial correlations in which we controlled for sex and age. A medium-sized positive relation to the potentially problematic use of video games emerged for the presence of psychological symptoms including depression, anxiety, and hostility. Furthermore, several coping strategies were differentially associated with the potentially problematic use of video games: Self-blame and behavioral disengagement showed the strongest positive relations to potentially problematic video game use, followed by denial, acceptance, substance use, self-distraction, and venting. Planning, active coping, and, to a lesser extent, positive reframing were negatively associated with the potentially problematic use of video games. Moreover, the association with potentially problematic video game use was negative for general positive affect and positive and larger in size for general negative affect. However, potentially problematic video game use was clearly positively associated with the experience of both positive and negative affect while playing. Further, a preference for solitude, shyness, and loneliness were positively correlated with the potentially problematic use of video games. Lower self-esteem, lower life satisfaction, and, to a lesser extent, poorer perceived social support and lower self-efficacy went along with potentially problematic video game use. There was an association between fewer offline friends and acquaintances but more online connections with potentially problematic video gaming. Finally, poorer performance in school (i.e., higher grades) was related to the potentially problematic use of video games. These results suggest that potentially problematic video gaming goes along with poor psychological functioning and vice versa.

Table 1. Associations between potentially problematic video gaming and psychological functioning.

Reasons for Playing Video Games and Psychological Functioning

Second, we investigated whether players’ reasons for playing video games were differentially related to the psychological functioning variables. Table 2 presents the partial correlations, controlling for sex and age. Using video games to distract oneself from stress was clearly connected to a high level of psychological symptoms. Distraction-motivated gamers preferred coping strategies such as self-blame, behavioral disengagement, self-distraction, denial, substance use, venting, and acceptance, but they neglected active coping and planning. They showed less general positive affect and more negative affect both in general and while playing as well as more positive affect while playing. These gamers further reported low self-esteem and low life satisfaction, loneliness, a preference for solitude, shyness, a lack of self-efficacy and social support, and poor achievement in school. A similar but somewhat less extreme picture was revealed for gamers who played video games in order to have something to talk about . However, these gamers reported more online connections. Gamers who played video games to improve their real-life abilities also reported more online connections. In addition, these gamers showed higher levels of general positive affect. The strongest association with online friends and acquaintances emerged, as expected, for gamers who played because of the social relations in the virtual world. Although all reasons for playing video games were related to positive affect while playing, the strongest associations emerged for gamers who played because of the social relations , to stimulate their imagination , and for curiosity . It is interesting that, for gamers who played video games because of the storyline and for relaxation , there was a relation only to positive but not to negative affect while playing. Reasons for playing were only weakly related to sex and age (see Supplementary Table S2 ). In sum, several reasons for playing video games were differentially associated with psychological functioning.

Table 2. Associations between reasons for playing video games and psychological functioning.

Video Game Genre and Psychological Functioning

Third, we examined whether players’ preferences for different video game genres were differentially associated with the measures of psychological functioning. Table 3 shows the partial correlations in which we controlled for sex and age. There was a weak connection between general psychological symptoms and all of the video game genres we investigated except strategy. A preference for action games had the strongest association with affect while playing. Thus, action games seem to be both rewarding and a source of frustration. A preference for action games went along with poorer school performance. Gamers who preferred role-playing games scored higher on shyness and a preference for solitude and lower on self-esteem; they also reported fewer offline connections. By contrast, preferences for games of the unclassified category on average went along with a larger number of offline friends and more positive affect, both while playing and in general. Two game genres (i.e., role-playing and unclassified games) were related to the coping strategy of self-distraction. Because preferred game genre was related to participants’ sex (see Supplementary Table S3 ), we had a more detailed look at the correlations between preferred game genre and psychological functioning separately for both sexes: For males ( n = 2,377), the strongest correlation between general psychopathology and game genre emerged for action ( r = 0.08, p < 0.001), followed by role playing ( r = 0.07, p < 0.01), and unclassified ( r = 0.07, p < 0.01). For females ( n = 357), the strongest relation between general psychopathology and game genre emerged for simulation ( r = 0.17, p < 0.01). Differences were also found regarding the strength of the relation between number of friends online and the genre action: r = 0.06, p < 0.01 for males, and r = 0.27, p < 0.001 for females. Similarly, preferred game genre was related to participants’ age (see Supplementary Table S3 ). However, there were merely differences with regard to the relation of psychological functioning and game genre, when analyzed separately for different age groups (<19 years, n = 557; 19–30 years, n = 1916; >31 years, n = 261). In sum, our results speak to the idea that individuals with different levels of psychological functioning differ in their choices of game genres and vice versa.

Table 3. Associations between preferred video game genre and psychological functioning.

Predicting Potentially Problematic Video Game Use by Psychological Functioning Variables

In a final step, we entered all of the investigated psychological functioning variables as well as sex and age as predictors of the potentially problematic use of video games. By employing this procedure, we were able to determine the unique contribution of each psychological functioning variable when the influence of all other variables was held constant. As Table 4 shows, the number of online friends and acquaintances as well as positive affect while playing were most predictive of potentially problematic video game use over and above all other variables. General psychopathology, a lack of offline connections, and poor school performance were weaker but still relevant predictors of potentially problematic video game use.

Table 4. Prediction of potentially problematic video game use by psychological functioning variables.

With this study, we aimed to shed light on the association of diverse video gaming habits with gamers’ psychological functioning. Drawing on a large sample, our results revealed a medium-sized relation between potentially problematic video game use and poor psychological functioning with regard to general psychological symptoms, maladaptive coping strategies, negative affectivity, low self-esteem, and a preference for solitude as well as poor school performance. These findings are in line with those of prior work (e.g., Kuss and Griffiths, 2012 ; Milani et al., 2018 ). Also, reasons for playing video games were differentially related to psychological functioning with the most pronounced findings for escape-oriented in contrast to gain-oriented motives. Specifically, distraction-motivated gaming went along with higher symptom ratings, lower self-esteem, and more negative affectivity, whereas playing to establish social relationships in the virtual world was related to a larger number of online connections and more positive affect while playing. Furthermore, there were only weak relations between the preferred game genres and psychological functioning. The action games genre was associated with the strongest ratings of affect while playing. These results on reasons and genres may help to explain conflicting findings of former studies, because in our work we examined various reasons for playing, several game genres, and various aspects of psychological functioning simultaneously. Finally, positive affect while playing and a larger number of online friends were the strongest unique predictors of potentially problematic video game use, followed by psychological symptoms, a lack of offline connections, and poor school performance. These findings suggest that, on the one hand, independent of one’s psychological conditions, enjoying oneself during gaming (i.e., experiencing positive affect, connecting with online friends) may go along with potentially problematic use of video games. On the other hand, poor psychological functioning seems to be a unique risk factor for potentially problematic video gaming.

The presented results are generally in line with previous work that has identified a connection between video gaming and psychological health, academic problems, and social problems ( Ferguson et al., 2011 ; Müller et al., 2015 ). However, our study moved beyond prior research by providing in-depth analyses of both video gaming habits (including potentially problematic use, reasons for playing, and preferred game genre) and psychological functioning (including psychological symptoms, coping styles, affectivity, as well as variables that are related to individuals and their social environments). In addition, we identified unique predictors of potentially problematic video game use.

How can the findings on differential relations between video gaming and various indices of psychological functioning – ranging from beneficial results ( Latham et al., 2013 ) to unfavorable results ( Barlett et al., 2009 ; Möller and Krahé, 2009 ; Anderson et al., 2010 ) – be integrated? According to Kanfer and Phillips (1970) , problematic behavior (e.g., excessive video gaming) can be understood as a function of the situation (e.g., being rejected by a peer); the organism (e.g., low self-esteem); the person’s thoughts, physical reactions, and feelings (e.g., sadness, anger); and finally, the short- as well as long-term consequences of the behavior (termed SORKC model). In the short run, according to our results, playing video games may be a way to distract oneself from everyday hassles and may lead to positive affect while playing and a feeling of being connected to like-minded people, all of which are factors that have an immediate reinforcing value. In the long run, however, spending many hours per day in front of a computer screen may prevent a person from (a) developing and practicing functional coping strategies, (b) finding friends and support in the social environment, and (c) showing proper school achievement, factors that are potentially harmful to the person. Thus, differentiating between short- and long-term perspectives may help us understanding the differential correlates of intensive video gaming.

When is it appropriate to speak of video game addiction? More and more researchers have suggested a continuum between engagement ( Charlton and Danforth, 2007 ; Skoric et al., 2009 ) and pathological gaming/addiction, instead of a categorical perspective. In part, this recommendation has also been followed in the DSM-5 ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ) where Internet Gaming Disorder is classified with different degrees of severity, ranging from mild to moderate to severe, according to the functional impairment associated with it. The AICA-S also allows for a differential perspective on gaming behavior by providing ways to assess both the time spent playing video games and the main DSM criteria that indicate Internet Gaming Disorder. However, in our study we did not aim at making a diagnosis, but at having a closer look at potentially problematic gaming behavior and its correlates in a non-clinical sample.

In sum, it seems relevant to assess not only the extent of video game use but also the reasons behind this behavior (e.g., distraction) and the concrete rewards that come from playing (e.g., the experience of strong affect while playing action games) to fully understand the relation between video gaming and psychological functioning.

Limitations and Future Directions

With the present study, we aimed to uncover the association between video gaming and psychological functioning. Our approach was cross-sectional and warrants interpretative caution because correlations cannot determine the direction of causation. It remains unclear whether potentially problematic gaming is a factor that contributes to the development of psychological dysfunction or whether psychological dysfunction contributes to potentially problematic gaming. Also, a third factor (e.g., preexisting mental difficulties) may produce both psychological dysfunction and potentially problematic gaming. Thus, longitudinal studies that are designed to identify the causal pathway may provide a promising avenue for future research. Future studies may also answer the question whether the link between video gaming and psychological functioning is moderated by sex, age, the reasons for playing, or the preferred game genre. In addition, it is important not to forget that the present results are based on a self-selected sample in which potentially problematic video gamers were overrepresented (e.g., Festl et al., 2013 , for a representative sample). Thus, future research should replicate our findings in a representative sample. Further, we relied on self-reported data, which is a plausible method for assessing inner affairs such as people’s reasons for their behaviors, but it would be helpful to back up our findings with evidence derived from sources such as peers, caregivers, and health specialists. Our work reflects only a first approach to the topic, and future work may additionally collect in-game behavioral data from the players ( McCreery et al., 2012 ; Billieux et al., 2013 ) to objectively and more specifically investigate diverse patterns of use. Furthermore, one must not forget that the used taxonomy to classify video game genres is only one of various possible options and one should “think of each individual game as belonging to several genres at once” ( Apperley, 2006 , p. 19). Finally, some of the effects reported in our paper were rather modest in size. This is not surprising considering the complexity and multiple determinants of human behavior. In our analyses, we thoroughly controlled for the influence of sex and age and still found evidence that video gaming was differentially related to measures of psychological functioning.

The current study adds to the knowledge on gaming by uncovering the specific relations between video gaming and distinct measures of psychological functioning. Potentially problematic video gaming was found to be associated with positive affect and social relationships while playing but also with psychological symptoms, maladaptive coping strategies, negative affectivity, low self-esteem, a preference for solitude, and poor school performance. Including gamers’ reasons for playing video games and their preferred game genres helped deepen the understanding of the specific and differential associations between video gaming and psychological health. This knowledge might help developing adequate interventions that are applied prior to the occurrence of psychological impairments that may go along with potentially problematic video gaming.

Ethics Statement

In our online survey, participants were given information on voluntary participation, risks, confidentiality/anonymity, and right to withdraw. Whilst participants were not signing a separate consent form, consent was obtained by virtue of completion. We implemented agreed procedures to maintain the confidentiality of participant data.

Author Contributions

BB, BE, JH, and KM conceived and designed the study. BB, JH, and KM collected and prepared the data. JH analyzed the data. BE and JH wrote the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01731/full#supplementary-material

^ The data were gathered as part of a larger project ( Stopfer et al., 2015 ; Braun et al., 2016 ). However, the analyses in the present article do not overlap with analyses from previous work.
^ Other measures were administered, but they were not relevant to the present research questions and are thus not mentioned in this paper. The data set and analysis script supporting the conclusions of this manuscript can be retrieved from https://osf.io/emrpw/?view_only=856491775efe4f99b407e258c2f2fa8d .

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Keywords : computer games, video gaming behavior, game genres, coping, psychological health

Citation: von der Heiden JM, Braun B, Müller KW and Egloff B (2019) The Association Between Video Gaming and Psychological Functioning. Front. Psychol. 10:1731. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01731

Received: 14 September 2018; Accepted: 11 July 2019; Published: 26 July 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 von der Heiden, Braun, Müller and Egloff. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Juliane M. von der Heiden, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Video game play may provide learning, health, social benefits, review finds

February 2014, Vol 45, No. 2

Print version: page 10

Playing video games, including violent shooter games, may boost children's learning, health and social skills, according to a review of research in American Psychologist .

The study comes out as debate continues among psychologists and other health professionals regarding the effects of violent media on youth. An APA task force is conducting a comprehensive review of research on violence in video games and interactive media and will release its findings later this year.

"Important research has already been conducted for decades on the negative effects of gaming, including addiction, depression and aggression, and we are certainly not suggesting that this should be ignored," says Isabela Granic, PhD, of Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands, lead author of the article. "However, to understand the impact of video games on children's and adolescents' development, a more balanced perspective is needed."

While one widely held view maintains that playing video games is intellectually lazy, such play actually may strengthen a range of cognitive skills such as spatial navigation, reasoning, memory and perception, according to several studies reviewed in the article. This is particularly true for shooter video games, which are often violent, the authors found. A 2013 meta-analysis found that playing shooter video games improved a player's capacity to think about objects in three dimensions just as well as academic courses designed to enhance these same skills, according to the study.

"This has critical implications for education and career development, as previous research has established the power of spatial skills for achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics," Granic says.

This enhanced thinking was not found when playing other types of video games, such as puzzles or role-playing games.

Playing video games may also help children develop problem-solving skills, the authors said. The more adolescents reported playing strategic video games, such as role-playing games, the more they improved in problem solving and school grades the following year, according to a long-term study published in 2013. Children's creativity was also enhanced by playing any kind of video game, including violent games, but not when the children used other forms of technology, such as a computer or cell phone, other research revealed.

Simple games that are easy to access and can be played quickly, such as "Angry Birds," can improve players' moods, promote relaxation and ward off anxiety, the study said. "If playing video games simply makes people happier, this seems to be a fundamental emotional benefit to consider," said Granic. The authors also highlighted the possibility that video games are effective tools for learning resilience in the face of failure. By learning to cope with ongoing failures in games, the authors suggest that children build emotional resilience they can rely upon in their everyday lives.

Another stereotype the research challenges is the socially isolated gamer. More than 70 percent of gamers play with a friend, and millions of people worldwide participate in massive virtual worlds through video games such as "Farmville" and "World of Warcraft," the article noted. Multiplayer games become virtual social communities, where decisions need to be made quickly about whom to trust or reject and how to lead a group, the authors said. People who play video games, even if they are violent, that encourage cooperation are more likely to be helpful to others while gaming than those who play the same games competitively, a 2011 study found.

— Lisa Bowen

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Benefits of Play Revealed in Research on Video Gaming

Video gaming leads to improved cognition, creativity, sociability, and more..

Posted March 27, 2018 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

In previous posts, and in my book Free to Learn , I described the decline in children’s opportunities to play and explore freely that has occurred over the past several decades. I also presented reasons to believe that this decline is a cause of well-documented declines in mental health ( here ), empathy ( here ), and creativity ( here ) among young people over this same time period.

The one variety of play that has not declined over these decades, but has increased, is video gaming. For the most part, children can no longer go outdoors and find others to play with, freely, away from adults, as they once did; but many of them can and do go onto computers and play video games. Over time, these games have become increasingly varied, complex, creative, and social. This is especially true with the increasing popularity of multi-player online games. If you believe the scare articles in the media, you might believe that the rise of video gaming is a cause of declines in psychological health, but, as I have suggested elsewhere (e.g. here ), the opposite may be true. Video gaming may in fact be an ameliorating factor, helping to counteract the harmful effects of the loss of other forms of play.

If video gaming worsens psychological wellbeing, then we should expect to find more mental health and social problems in video gamers than in otherwise similar people who are not gamers. If video gaming, like other forms of play, generally improves wellbeing, then we should find that gamers are mentally healthier, on average, than non-gamers. By now, many dozens of studies have examined psychological correlates of and consequences of video gaming, and, taken as a whole, the results overwhelmingly support the idea that video gaming produces many of the same kinds of benefits as other forms of play. Here is a review of that research.

Cognitive Benefits

Most of the video gaming research to date has focused on cognition . Correlational studies have consistently revealed that young people who play video games extensively have, on average, higher IQs and perform better on a wide variety of cognitive tests of perceptual and mental ability than do non-gamers. Moreover, a number of experiments have demonstrated improvement in previous non-gamers' cognitive abilities when they take up gaming for the sake of the experiment. I summarized many of those findings in a previous post ( here ). Research more recently has confirmed and extended those findings.

In a recent article in Psychological Bulletin , Benoit Bediou and his colleagues (2018) reviewed all of the recent research (published since 2000) they could find concerning the cognitive effects of playing action video games. They found 89 correlational studies, which related the average number of hours per week of action video games to one or more measures of cognitive ability, and 22 intervention studies (true experiments), in which non-gamers were asked to play action video games for a specified number of hours per week, for a specified number of weeks, and were compared with other non-gamers on degree of improvement over that time on one or more cognitive tests.

Their analysis of the correlational studies revealed, overall, strong positive relationships between amount of time gaming and high scores on tests of perception, top-down attention , spatial cognition, multitasking, and cognitive flexibility (ability to switch strategies quickly when old ones strategies don’t work). Their analysis of the intervention data indicated that even just 10 to 30 hours of video play, over the duration of an experiment, significantly improved performance on tests of perception, attention, spatial cognition, and cognitive flexibility.

Of course, different sorts of video games exercise different kinds of mental abilities. In contrast to fast-paced action games, strategy role-playing and puzzle games exercise problem-solving skills of a more reflective nature. Both correlational and longitudinal research have indicated that play at these games improves general problem-solving ability and may even result in higher academic grades (see Granic et al, 2014).

Most video game research has been conducted with teenagers or young adults as participants, but one large-scale study conducted by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Mental Health examined correlates of video gaming in children ages 6 to 11 (Kovess-Masfety et al., 2016). In this survey, 3195 children and their parents estimated the average number of hours per week that the children played video games, and parents and teachers filled out questionnaires regarding each child’s intellectual, social, and emotional functioning. The primary finding was that those who played video games for 5 hours a week or more evidenced significantly higher intellectual functioning, higher academic achievement, better peer relationships, and fewer mental health difficulties than those who played such games less or not at all.

Creativity Benefits

To date, there has been little research into possible links of video gaming to creativity. An exception is a study by Linda Jackson and her colleagues (2012) in Michigan, in which the participants were 491 12-year-old children. These researchers assessed the hours per week that each child typically spent playing video games, and also assessed time spent on cell phones or on the Internet not playing games. They assessed various aspects of creativity in each child using the well-validated Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (see here for more on this battery of tests).

They found significant positive correlations between amount of time playing video games and every aspect of creativity measured by Torrance’s Tests, which for some aspects were quite large and which held regardless of the child’s gender or race. In contrast, they found no significant correlations between creativity and non-gaming computer use.

Other research has shown significant positive correlations between amount of video gaming and the personality characteristic referred to as openness to new experiences (Chory & Goodboy, 2011), which itself correlates with creativity. The results indicate either that highly creative children are drawn to video gaming or that video gaming increases creativity (or both).

In a quite different sort of study, David Moffat and his colleagues (2017) assessed the immediate effect of video game play on creativity. They assessed young adults for creative thinking, using the Torrance Tests, before and right after 30 minutes of playing a computer game. The game used, for different groups, was Serious Sam (a shooter game), Portal-2 (a problem-solving game), or Minecraft (a sandbox game involving building and destroying whatever the player wishes).

The result, overall, was a large, significant gain in creative thinking, especially in that aspect of creative thinking referred to as flexibility . The gain occurred for all three types of computer games, but was greatest for Portal-2 . This study shows that even a short period of video gaming can put one, at least temporarily, into a highly creative frame of mind. This finding is quite similar to findings in previous research that other forms of play can also boost creativity (see Ch. 7 of Free to Learn ; also Gray, 2018).

Motivational Benefit

Video games are structured in such a way that the level of difficulty can be continuously increased, so players are challenged to solve ever more difficult problems. A general lesson from video games, reported by many gamers themselves, is that persistence pays off. If you keep trying, using various strategies, you will eventually succeed in meeting your goal within the game.

On the basis of this, Matthew Ventura and his colleagues (2013) hypothesized that gamers would be more persistent—less likely to give up early—in solving difficult problems than would non-gamers. They subsequently confirmed this hypothesis in an experiment with college students. They found that those who played video games many hours a week persisted significantly longer at attempting to solve very difficult anagrams and riddles than did those who played video games less or not at all. This gain in persistence may help explain the positive correlations between video gaming and school grades, noted earlier.

Emotional Benefits

A very general theory of play, which I have discussed in previous posts and articles ( here and here ), is the emotion regulation theory . According to this theory, children (and also other young mammals) deliberately put themselves into fear -inducing and sometimes frustration- or anger -inducing situations in play, and by doing so learn how to regulate their fear and anger.

I have heard from many parents who curtail their child's video gaming because they see the intense excitement and emotions, including negative emotions, the child experiences during and sometimes for a period of time after the gaming, and they are worried that this is not good for the child. But research supporting the emotion regulation theory indicates that a major purpose of play is to provide practice at dealing with fear and anger in the relatively safe context of play (Gray, 2018).

In play, children learn that they can experience these emotions and can subsequently calm themselves. They don’t have to panic or have a tantrum. There is evidence that children who have been “protected” from experiencing such emotions in play are subsequently less able to deal with the inevitable fear-and anger-producing situations of real life, outside of play (see, for examples, here and here ).

Consistent with the hypothesis that video gaming helps children learn to regulate their emotions is the evidence (mentioned earlier) that children who played video games for more than five hours a week exhibited fewer mental health difficulties, outside of play, than children who played such games less or not at all (Kovess-Masfety et al., 2016). Also, in studies in which they describe their own perceptions of benefits of gaming, gamers often talk about how video play helps them to deal better with the stress and frustrations of their non-play life (see here , and also Granic et al, 2014).

Social Benefits

There are many ways by which video play might be expected to produce social gains for players. As noted earlier, many of the most popular games today are social in nature, as players interact online with other players. Moreover, whenever possible, friends enjoy playing the same game together, at the same computer or at least in the same room. And when they are not gaming, children frequently discuss their games and gaming strategies with their friends.

Play has always provided the major context through which children make and interact with friends, and there is reason to think that video gaming serves that function for many children today. Children deprived of video gaming are likely to be left out of conversations among their peers, because so many of those conversations focus on games. Thus, it is not surprising that research, such as the study mentioned earlier involving children 6-11 years old, has revealed positive correlations between video gaming and social competence (Kovess-Masfety et al, 2016; for other studies, see Granic et al, 2014; and Olson, 2010; & Stevens et al, 2008).

Many games today are played cooperatively, with two or more players working together to achieve a common goal. John Valez and his colleagues have conducted several experiments showing that such cooperative play leads to at least a temporary increase in the players’ likelihood of cooperating with or helping other people, outside the realm of play (Ewoldsen et al, 2012; Valez et al, 2012).

If you are wondering why so many people continue to disparage computer gaming, despite the weight of contrary research evidence, you might read the new book, Moral Combat , by Patrick Markey and Christopher Ferguson. The book describes how moral panics tend to emerge whenever young people develop passionate interests that older people don’t understand.

These moral panics lead the media and people in general to attend to and exaggerate anything about the new passion that seems negative and ignore anything that seems positive. The result, often, is absurd claims of harm, such as that New York Post article about “digital heroin” that I referred to in my last post .

And now, what do you think about this? … This blog is, in part, a forum for discussion. Your questions, thoughts, stories, and opinions are treated respectfully by me and other readers, regardless of the degree to which we agree or disagree. Psychology Today no longer accepts comments on this site, but you can comment by going to my Facebook profile, where you will see a link to this post. If you don't see this post at the top of my timeline, just put the title of the post into the search option (click on the three-dot icon at the top of the timeline and then on the search icon that appears in the menu) and it will come up. By following me on Facebook you can comment on all of my posts and see others' comments. The discussion is often very interesting.

Bediou, B., et al (2018). Meta-analysis of action video game impact on perceptual, attentional, and cognitive skills. Psychological Bulletin, 44 , 77-110.

Chory, R. M., & Goodboy, A. K. (2011). Is basic personality related to violent and non-violent video game play and preferences? Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14 , 191–198.

Ewoldsen, D. R., et al (2012). Effect of playing violent video games cooperatively or competitively on subsequent cooperative behavior. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15 , 1-4.

Granic, I., Lobel, A., & Engels, R. (2014). The benefits of playing video games. American Psychologist, 69 , 66-78.

Gray, P. (in press for 2018 publication). Evolutionary functions of play: Practice, resilience, innovation, and cooperation. In P. K. Smith & J. Roopnarine (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Play: Developmental and Disciplinary Perspectives .

Jackson, L, et al (2012). Information technology use and creativity: Findings from the children and technology study. Computers in Human Behavior, 28 , 370-379.

Kovess-Masfety, V., et al (2016) Is time spent playing video games associated with mental health, cognitive and social skills in young children? Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 51 , 49-357.

Moffat, M., et al 2017). Some video games can increase the player’s creativity. International Journal of Game-Based Learning, 7 , 35-46.

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Stevens et al. (2008). “In-game, in-room, in-world: reconnecting video game play to the rest of kids’ lives. pp 41-66 in K. Salen (Ed.), The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning . The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation series on digital media and learning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Valez, J. A., et al (2012). Ingroup versus outgroup conflict in the context of violent video game play: The effect of cooperation on increased helping and decreased aggression. Communication Research, 20 , 1-20.

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Peter Gray, Ph.D. , is a research professor at Boston College, author of Free to Learn and the textbook Psychology (now in 8th edition), and founding member of the nonprofit Let Grow.

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Indicateurs d’addiction au jeu pubg chez les adolescents indicators of pubg addiction among teenagers, wahiba guiraa hatem.

Nous nous intéressons dans cet article à la dépendance aux jeux vidéo chez les adolescents à travers la recherche que nous avons menée au sein de deux établissements d’enseignement secondaire, où nous avons choisi 06 cas parmi les adolescents qui ont déclaré passer beaucoup de temps devant leurs écrans de téléphone en jouant à des jeux vidéo notamment le PUBG.

Pour vérifier nos hypothèses, nous avons utilisé l’entretien semi directif et le questionnaire IGD spécifique à l’addiction aux jeux vidéo. Notre recherche vise à faire ressortir les indicateurs physiques, cognitifs, émotionnels et comportementaux de la dépendance au jeu PUBG.

Les résultats montrent que ces indicateurs sont présents chez la plupart de ces adolescents, mais à des degrés différents et que jouer au PUBG les affecte physiquement (fatigue, douleurs corporelles et trouble du sommeil), émotionnellement (stress, frustration), cognitivement (manque de concentration et baisse des résultats scolaires) et comportementalement (violence et agressivité).

In this article, we look at video game addiction in adolescents through research we carried out in two secondary schools, where we selected 06 cases from among the adolescents who said they spent a lot of time in front of their phone screens playing video games, particularly PUBG.

To test our hypotheses, we used a semi-structured interview and the IGD questionnaire specific to video game addiction. The aim of our research was to identify the physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral indicators of PUBG addiction.

The results show that these indicators are present in most of these adolescents, but to varying degrees, and that playing PUBG affects them physically (fatigue, body aches and sleep disorders), emotionally (stress, frustration), cognitively (lack of concentration and lower school results) and behaviorally (violence and aggression).

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How did Raygun qualify for the Olympics? Is she really the best Australia has to offer?

Since Australian breaker Rachael "Raygun" Gunn failed to score a single point in any of her Olympic bouts, many have asked how she qualified for the Games.

Fellow breaker and anthropologist Lucas Marie says she won her qualification "fair and square" last year, but African American man Malik Dixon has criticised the Olympic body for letting her in.

What's next?

Breaking will not be an event at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games — a decision made before Raygun's performance.

The 2024 Paris Olympics marked breaking's debut as a sport at the global event, with 36-year-old lecturer and breaker Rachael "Raygun" Gunn representing Australia for the first time.

Having failed to win a single point in any of her Olympic bouts, Raygun quickly became a viral sensation.

The question on many people's minds now is: How did she even qualify?

Lucas Marie is a breaker who has competed, performed, taught and judged breaking competitions over the past 25 years. He's also an anthropologist who recently co-authored an article with Gunn.

He says the answer to that question is simple.

A black and white close-up image of Lucas Marie smiling.

"There was an Oceania qualifier in which any B-boy or B-girl from Australia [or] New Zealand could enter, and that was in Sydney in October 2023," he told ABC News.

"And leading up to that, there were a lot of other events in which breakers were competing.

"She won those battles fair and square and won the qualification in Sydney.

"And it wasn't really a surprise to anyone.

"She's been fairly consistent, winning or coming second or third at a lot of breaking events in Australia for the last five to 10 years."

Marie said there was nothing out of the ordinary about Raygun's performance.

"It's not like gymnastics where there's this kind of agreed-upon standard," he said.

"It's always had a rawness to it. It's always had an improvisational kind of quality. And I think looking different and trying different stuff has always been celebrated.

"And I think Raygun, in a way, was just expressing a core kind of hip hop trait in a way a lot of breakers do."

He described her efforts as bold.

"I thought — and this is how I judge a lot of breaking events — I thought, 'Oh, she's making some really interesting choices to mimic Australian animals.' And you can kind of see the choices that she's making in the moment."

Is she the best Australia has to offer?

Team Australia chef de mission Anna Meares insisted after Raygun's performance that she was the best breaker the country had to offer. But is this true?

A man in purple pants doing a handstand.

"It's sometimes just who's performing better on the day," Marie said.

"And at the qualification event in which she won, and other events in which she's won, she performed better on that day and won the ticket.

"That doesn't mean she's the best. It doesn't really work like that.

"I think she's a great breaker. She won the qualification. She's won other events in the past, and she was a good representative for Australia at that competition."

Asked whether there were B-girls in Perth, regional Victoria or rural Brisbane who might have qualified but could not afford to travel to Sydney for the tryouts, Marie agreed this was possible.

"Of course, there's breakers all over the country that maybe should have been in that event, but they weren't."

Breaking will not carry over to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, a decision made before Raygun's battle.

Marie described this as sad.

"Maybe, based on the ratings, they'll reassess that and maybe allocate some medals to breaking," he said.

"I really hope that's the case, and I hope that for other breakers who want to compete in it as a dance sport."

Marie said that at the end of the day people should remember they were dealing with a human.

"As a friend of Rachael's, there's a human being who's getting a lot of negative attention," he said.

"I think people kind of miss that sometimes and forget the human aspect of all this."

'Toying with the culture'

Malik Dixon is an African American who has been living in Australia for more than a decade and is a Sydney University graduate.

He said Raygun made a total "mockery" out of breaking at the Olympics.

A blurry image of Malik Dixon wearing a blue shirt reading "CHAPEL HILL".

"She was dressed like a member of the cricket team or an Australian PE teacher, and from that point it just seemed like satire," Mr Dixon told ABC News.

"It just looked like somebody who was toying with the culture and didn't know how culturally significant it was being the first time in the Olympics and just how important it was to people who really cherish hip hop and one of the elements of hip hop, which is breakdancing.

"It made me think, was Borat her breakdancing coach?"

Mr Dixon said too many people felt entitled to African American culture.

"The African American space has been one where we've shared our community so much and without any restraints, any barriers, roadblocks, obstacles, any gatekeepers, that essentially what should have been African American cultural capital is just shared, which is cool," he said.

"We like to share, right?

"We shared 400 years of free labour.

"To see Rachael in her attempt to be a part of the culture just be grossly underwhelming made it seem like she didn't take it seriously."

Olympics body criticised for Raygun qualification

Mr Dixon criticised the body that qualified Raygun, saying she devalued breaking with her performance.

"Whatever governing body nominated her as Australia's entrant into the Olympics either did not understand the assignment or didn't really believe in the integrity or significance of breakdancing, because if they did they would just say, rather than disrespect the culture, we're just not ready to send an applicant this year."

He said Raygun was extremely audacious and not self-aware.

"You've got to know your role, know your position, know your limitation," he said.

"And I think that part of privilege is saying that there are no limits to what I can do.

"Part of privilege is having the authority to say that there are no limits and there are no requirements, there are no prerequisites to what I can do."

Raygun's degrees do not hold much water with Mr Dixon.

"Due to consumerism, this Foundational Black American product, which is hip hop, is global," he said.

"And even people who have no connection to any African Americans or any local or regional things that come out in these songs, they have become a part of the whole experience now.

"If I came in and said that I was an authority on Greek music and I was going against the grain of what the mainstream Greek musicians thought, or the school of thought, and I've said that I was the authority, people would check me on that.

"If I had a PhD in sprinting, does that qualify me to go against Noah Lyles? No, it doesn't."

He also doubts Raygun was the best breaker Australia had to offer.

"[There's] got to be somebody out here that's better than that! The kangaroo! The sprinkler! She did the sprinkler out there, man!" he said.

Should everybody just lighten up?

Should we lighten up? Mr Dixon does not believe so.

"Larrikinism is used as a get-out-of-jail-free card and to escape responsibility of how words or actions impact a hurt person," he said.

"But when the majority culture is offended, there's no playing around.

"This is a part of my culture, and I don't think Australians are in a place to tell me how I should feel about breakdancing being mocked on an international stage.

"People who don't have any or limited access to black people or hip hop culture now may see Rachael and her buffoonery as a representation of hip hop and black culture.

"People who were already side-eyeing breakdancing as an Olympic sport, Rachael Gunn has put the nail in that coffin.

"This might be the most viral clip of the whole Olympics. From a comedy standpoint, she's got it, but from an Olympics perspective, its regressive."

X (formerly Twitter)

In an Olympic sport that may be one and done, Australia's first breaker bows out in 'different' performance

'All about originality': Olympics breakdancing judge joins community backing Raygun amid online criticism

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Five decades after its birth in the basements of the Bronx, breaking is at the Olympic Games for the first time.

Ahead of the long awaited opening event in Paris, here’s all you need to get ready for the sport’s Olympic debut.

NBC Olympics Research contributed to this guide.

Origin story of breaking

Breaking originated in the Bronx, New York, in the early 1970s, after DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), a Jamaican American DJ, noticed that young people tended to dance more energetically during the instrumental section (the "break") of a song. He pioneered the technique of mixing and producing a continuous danceable beat, or a "breakbeat". Campbell, commonly known simply as "Herc", emphasized the instrumental portion of a record, particularly the percussion and the bass, and his breaks helped form the basis of hip-hop music. The birth of hip-hop and breaking are closely intertwined, and hip-hop culture remains an integral part of breaking culture.

Using two turntables and a mixer, a 16-year-old Herc isolated the instrumental grooves from existing records, which he referred to as "the get down part" of the records. Herc and his younger sister Cindy hosted a "Back to School Jam" on Aug. 11, 1973, in the Bronx, where Herc debuted his new breaks drawn from James Brown's 1970 album "Sex Machine". Herc charged 25 cents for girls and 50 cents for boys who came to the party. "Once they heard that, there was no turning back," Herc said in 1998. "They always wanted to hear breaks after breaks after breaks."

Demand grew for Herc to host more parties and events, and he soon hosted a dance contest where the winning couple earned $25. He called the dancers break-boys and break-girls and coined the terms B-Boy and B-Girl, which are used today in breaking. Herc said that the term breaking was 1970s slang for "getting excited", "acting energetically", or "causing a disturbance."

Breaking began as toprock, performed standing up. By the mid-1970s, breakers incorporated freeze, in which they halted movement while balancing in a stylish or difficult position. By the early 1980s, downrock became a part of breaking, where breakers showcased their footwork with their bodies close to the floor. Early downrock was drawn from the Ukrainian Tropak dance. By 1983, a B-Boy named Powerful PEX, along with the New York City Breakers, added power moves, which are the most prominent, flashy and acrobatic moves that the sport is widely known for today. In the 1990s, Euro-style and Toronto-style downrocks added more complex moves to breaking. Toprock, downrock, power moves and freezes form the basis of breaking today.

Breaking spread through the New York City boroughs in the 1970s, popular especially among Black and Puerto Rican youths, and it gained exposure on television and in Hollywood movies in the 1980s, which helped it spread worldwide.

Competition history

The longest-running breaking competition in the world is Battle of the Year, which has been held annually since its debut in Germany in 1990 (it was then called the International Breakdance Cup). The World DanceSport Federation was officially recognized by the IOC in 1997, and the WDSF initially tried unsuccessfully to push other forms of dance into the Olympics. Then, seeing the appeal of breaking among younger fans, as well as its relatively low cost with few competitors needed, the WDSF succeeded in getting breaking added to the 2018 Youth Olympic program. After breaking was successful in 2018 in Buenos Aires, the sport was officially added to the Olympic program on Dec. 7, 2021, set to make its Olympic debut at the 2024 Paris Games. Breaking is not scheduled to be included on the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic program.

How does Olympic breaking work?

Sixteen men and 17 women will compete in Paris. In the women's event, the 16th- and 17th-seeded athletes will face each other in a pre-qualifier battle, with the winner advancing to the round robin and the loser being eliminated. The men's event begins immediately with the round robin. From that point on, the format is the same for both events.

Each battle in the round robin (which features four groups of four athletes each) consists of two rounds. A round robin battle can end in a 1-1 tie. After each breaker faces the other three athletes in their group once, breakers are ranked by number of rounds won, with the top two in each group advancing to the quarterfinals (the first tiebreaker is judges' votes collected, followed by pre-competition seeding).

In the quarterfinals, semifinals, and medal battles, each battle is a three-round one-on-one contest. The semifinal winners face off for gold, while the semifinal losers face each other for bronze.

How is Olympic breaking judged?

Nine judges score the battles on five criteria — technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality, which all constitute 20 percent of the total score. They make these judgments on a sliding scale to determine a winner, meaning that they judge each competitor relative to their opponent in each category rather than assigning them raw individual scores. So, for instance, if a judge deems two competitors evenly matched in technique, vocabulary and execution, but the first athlete has much better musicality and slightly worse originality, the 20% available in each category might be split 10/10 for the first three, 16/4 for musicality and 9/11 for originality, with the judge deeming the first athlete the overall winner with 55% of the total score (10+10+10+16+9 / 100). Whichever competitor is deemed the winner by the majority of judges wins the round.

Competitors do not know what music they will be dancing to in advance of the competition. Each round lasts approximately one minute (there is no explicit penalty for going too long or too short, but rounds are typically within 15 seconds of that guideline). When one breaker completes their round, their opponent goes immediately into their set. Judges promptly make their decisions after the conclusion of the set amount of rounds (two in the round robin, three for the rest of the competition).

Olympic breaking schedule

Breaking at the 2024 Paris Olympics

August 9	Women (B-Girl), Qualification Women (B-Girl), Final	10a-12p 2p-4p
August 10	Men (B-Boy), Qualification Men (B-Boy), Final	10a-12p 2p-4p

Where is Olympic breaking happening?

The breaking competitions will take place at La Concorde Urban Park in the heart of Paris. The public square will be temporarily transformed into a venue for multiple sports, and a space to highlight the cultures of Paris. The park will be a hub for the Summer Games, with areas for visitors to enjoy live DJs, sport demonstrations, dining areas and more.

Along with breaking, La Concorde Urban Park will be home to skateboarding, basketball 3x3 and BMX freestyle.

A rendering of how the Place de la Concorde will look during the Olympic Games

Naming conventions

An important note on breaking names: In breaking, you will often see references to athletes with "B-Boy" or "B-Girl" in front of their names (ex. B-Boy Phil Wizard, B-Girl Logistx). However, while it is accurate to call Phil Wizard a B-Boy and Logistx a B-Girl, some athletes have said that they prefer not to have that moniker included as part of their breaking names, so it is NBC's style to honor that and call them by their breaking names: Phil Wizard , Logistx , Sunny , etc.

When you watch breaking, you might hear some unfamiliar terms, if you haven't watch before. Here's a quick-and-dirty guide:

Power head : A power head is someone who loves to practice and perform mostly power moves in their breaking. Power moves are acrobatic moves that require momentum, speed, endurance, strength, flexibility and control. The breaker is generally supported by their upper body, while the rest of their body creates circular momentum.

Footwork cat : A footwork cat is someone who loves to practice and perform footwork in their breaking. This describes any movement on the floor with the hands supporting the dancer as much as the feet.

Popping : A continuous flexing of the muscles to the beat. Some moves include arm and body waves that look like an electric current has passed through the body.

Locking : Freezing from a fast movement and "locking" into a certain position, holding it, and then continuing at the same speed as before.

Headspin : In a headstand position, the breaker spins by pushing with their hands.

Heelspin : Breaker puts their weight on one heel and initiates a spin by swinging their leg.

Windmill : Breaker rotates continuously on one shoulder with their feet in the air and legs apart.

Backspin : Breaker balances weight on their upper back and goes into a spin by pushing with their hands or swinging the legs across the body.

Throw down : When the B-Girl or B-Boy hits the floor and starts breaking, they are doing a throw down.

Set : A set is a breaker's prepared round or combination of moves.

Repeating : When a breaker reuses a move that they've already done during the competition, they are considered to have been "repeating." Twenty percent of a breaker's score is originality, and repeating can negatively impact that score.

Bite/biter/biting : When a breaker is accused of 'biting' or being a 'biter,' it means that they have either stolen or copied moves/style from another breaker. Similar to "repeating," this can also affect a breaker's originality score.

Crashing : If a breaker 'crashes,' it means they failed an attempted move and fell during or at the end of their attempt. This may be the most common cause of a breaker losing a battle. The best breakers, however, know how to turn a crash into a move and can control the crash enough to continue their flow into something else.

Women's event: Who to watch for

Tops among medal contenders is 17- year-old Dominika Banevic (“Nicka”) of Lithuania, who broke through to win the 2023 world title at age 16. While some of her challengers, such as Ayumi Fukushima (“Ayumi”) of Japan and American Sunny Choi (“Sunny”) didn't start breaking until their early 20s, Nicka started breaking in her living room as a 5-year-old after discovering the sport on YouTube. That early start helped her develop an extremely well-rounded style.

Sunny, the 2019 world silver medalist and 2023 U.S. champion, quit her job as the Director of Global Creative Operations at skincare and makeup company Estee Lauder in January 2023 to focus on breaking full-time. She clinched a spot in the Olympics by winning the 2023 Pan American Games title.

Logan Edra (“Logistx”) , 2023 world quarterfinalist, won the Red Bull BC One World Final in 2021 and finished second at the 2023 U.S. Championships. She earned the second and final U.S. women's Olympic spot at the Olympic Qualifier Series, which ended in June. Sunny and Logistx are both outside medal contenders. Logistx, born to Filipino parents in California, was given her breaking name by her father, who said she always needed a logistical plan for everything she did.

Nicka defeated Ayumi , a 42-year-old Japanese breaking legend, in the final at 2023 Worlds. Ayumi, the 2021 world champion, leads a strong Japanese contingent. Both legs of the Olympic Qualifier Series were Japanese podium sweeps, with Ayumi beating 2022 world champion Ami Yuasa ("Ami") in the Shanghai final and Ami avenging the loss in the Budapest final, ensuring qualification for both as the top two finishers in the series.

Riko Tsuhako ("Riko") finished third in both events and was the only woman who finished top-10 in the series but failed to qualify. Ayumi and Ami are both solid medal contenders with a shot at gold. Ayumi came from humble beginnings in the sport, with her first battle coming as a 21-year-old against an elementary school girl.

Nicka may be challenged further by 2022 world runner-up Liu Qingyi (“671”) of China and 2022 European and Red Bull BC One champion India Sardjoe (“India”) of the Netherlands.

French teenager Sya Dembele (“Syssy”) finished third at 2023 Worlds, and she has also emerged as a medal contender for the host nation.

Men's event: Who to watch for

Victor Montalvo (“Victor”) is considered by many to be the most successful competitor in the sport's history, and he is the gold medal favorite. His 2023 world title (his second in three years) clinched his spot in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Victor got his start in the sport at age 6, following in the footsteps of his father, who was a B-Boy in Mexico. Victor's father was also a member of a death metal band in Mexico before he ultimately moved to the U.S. for better opportunities to raise a family.

Jeffrey Louis (“Jeffro”) , who lost to Victor in the 2022 World Games final, is the second U.S. man to qualify for breaking and is a medal contender. He enters Paris ranked No. 4 in the World DanceSport Federation rankings.

Philip Kim (“Phil Wizard”) defeated Shigeyuki Nakarai (“Shigekix”) to win the 2022 world title, and he finished second to Victor at 2023 Worlds. Phil Wizard, who qualified for the Games with his 2023 Pan American Games title, is expected to be Victor’s top challenger for gold. Shigekix, a bronze medalist at the 2018 Youth Olympics, 2022 World Games, and 2023 World Championships, is close behind.

Danis Civil (“Dany Dann”) , 2022 European champion, is the top medal hope for the French. Dany Dann left his home country of French Guiana (in South America) in 2008 to further his breaking career in Paris. He married a B-Girl, Marion, and they worked as nurses in a hospital together before he began focusing on breaking full-time in the lead-up to the Games.

Another potential medal contender is 2021 Red Bull BC One World Final champion Amir Zakirov ("Amir") of Kazakhstan.

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Video Game Addiction and Emotional States: Possible Confusion Between Pleasure and Happiness?

1 Research Center for Work and Consumer Psychology, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

2 Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands

Nicolas Debue

Jonathan lete, cécile van de leemput, associated data.

All datasets generated for this study are included in the article/supplementary material.

Internet gaming disorder is characterized by a severely reduced control over gaming, resulting in an increasing gaming time and leading to negative consequences in many aspects of the individual life: personal, family, social, occupational and other relevant areas of functioning (World Health Organization). In the last years, the significant boom in using video games has been raising health issues that remain insufficiently understood. The extent of this phenomenon (the estimated prevalence is between 1.7 and 10% of the general population) has led the mentioned Organization to include gaming disorders in the list of mental health conditions (2018). Several studies show converging findings that highlight the common brain activities between substance use disorders and behavioral addictions (i.e., gaming disorders). Addiction specialists observed that addict subjects tend to confuse pleasure with happiness when linking emotional states to their addictive activities. As far as we know, beyond the mentioned observations, distinguishing the perception of these two emotional states in the frame of an addiction has not been yet the object of formal research. This study aims at examining the possible confusion between pleasure and happiness within the addiction sphere. Video game addiction has been chosen to explore the possible occurrence of this perceptional distortion. A mixed design lab-based study was carried out to compare between video games addicts and non-addicts (between-subjects), and video games-related activities and neutral activities (within-subject). Emotional reactions were gauged by self-reported scales and physiological data acquired through a range of biosensors: Relaxation and Hearth Rate. From a therapeutic standpoint, this research intends to explore alternatives to deal with this sort of disorders. More specifically, at the cognitive level, the idea is elaborating guidelines to develop patients’ insights into these emotional states and thus increasing their ability to handle them. Overall, several indices resulting from this study constitute a bundle of arguments that argue in favor of the confusion between pleasure and happiness made by addict users when associating their affective states to video gaming. Furthermore, this approach illustrates how reappraising emotions may contribute to reducing the perceptional distortion of these emotional states.

Introduction

In the last years, the significant boom in using video games (VG) has been raising health issues that remain insufficiently understood ( Khazaal et al., 2016 ). The World Health Organization [WHO] (2018) has recently included “gaming disorders” in the list of mental health conditions. According to WHO this affliction is a “persistent or recurrent behavior pattern of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.”

The fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) considers the ‘Internet Gaming Disorder’ as a potential new diagnosis that requires further research ( Petry et al., 2015 ). The prevalence of problematic gaming is estimated to range from 1.7% to over 10% among general population ( Griffiths et al., 2012 ).

Compared to the core topics of research in neuroscience such as stress, depression, etc., the chronic use of VG is a rather recent field of investigation. Yet, a growing number of studies have been produced in this field in the last two decades ( Andreassen et al., 2016 ). Indeed, several research projects have been exploring VG addiction from a behavioral, emotional, brain circuits and genetic perspectives ( Griffiths et al., 2012 ; Dong et al., 2017 ).

There seems to be converging findings that highlight the common brain activities between VG disorders (belonging to the cluster of behavioral addictions) and substance use disorders (SUD). It has been shown that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, orbital frontal cortex, para-hippocampal gyrus and thalamus were activated in both disorders ( Han et al., 2011 ). The limbic structures appear to be the key circuits linked with reward and addiction ( Cooper et al., 2017 ). In subjects suffering from these disorders, cues associated with SUD and with behavioral addiction can trigger craving, which is connected with the dopamine reward system ( Ko et al., 2009 ; Han et al., 2011 ). In addition, it has been observed that the level of dopamine released in the ventral striatum when playing a competition like video game is comparable to that provoked by psycho-stimulant drugs ( Koepp et al., 1998 ; Yau et al., 2012 ). Few studies have been carried out on the genetic aspects of this topic. Some of them indicate that there would be genetic background similarities between these two disorders. For example, the homozygous short allelic variant of the 5HTTLPR gene (encoding the serotonin transporter) is more prevalent among the excessive Internet user, which is also linked with increased drug consumption ( Serretti et al., 2006 , as cited in Yau et al., 2012 ; Lee et al., 2008 , as cited in Yau et al., 2012 ).

As described later, studying the confusion between pleasure and happiness in the frame of addiction requires as clear a demarcation as possible between these two emotional states. Although a consensus among scientists on how to define and distinguish pleasure and happiness remains to be reached (see next section Pleasure and Happiness ), in this research we have adopted the following distinctive traits to describe and to work with these two emotional states: pleasure relates to a transient emotional state resulting from the satisfaction of a desire, a craving, and happiness refers to a lasting emotional state of contentment, euthymia ( Pollard, 2003 ; Lustig, 2017 ).

According to Lustig (2017) , addictions together with depression are two rampant afflictions in the last decades and constitute the harmful extremes of pleasure (associated with the dopaminergic system) and happiness (associated with the serotoninergic system) respectively ( Üstün et al., 2004 ; Lepine and Briley, 2011 ; Szalavitz, 2011 ; Whiteford et al., 2013 ; Gowing et al., 2015 ; Keyes et al., 2015 ). Based on his long practice on addiction issues, this author argues that confusing pleasure (in the sense of longing, craving, strongly driven by a short term reward) with happiness is linked with SUD and with behavioral addictions (i.e., gambling, eating disorders, excessive use of technology like for example social media and VG, etc.), which could lead to depression ( Lawrence et al., 2014 ). According to the author, confusing pleasure with happiness is related to the growth rate of this disorder insofar as it would encourage seeking immediate gratifications perceived as sources of happiness, which in turn triggers the reward system with the risk to sink into the vicious circle of addiction ( Pollard, 2003 ). Besides, the significant industrial development, through its commercial campaigns, probably tended to lead individuals to equate consumption with happiness ( Schmidt, 2016 ; Lustig, 2017 ). From a physiological standpoint, the author highlights that an over excited reward system engenders an excess of dopamine (DA) release from the ventral tegmental area, which in return decreases serotonin (5HT) level (associated with depression) ( Pollard, 2003 ; MacNicol, 2016 ).

Moreover, Lustig underlines that DA and 5HT amino acids (needed for the production of DA and 5HT) share the amino acid transporters, which poses a problem in case of DA amino acid over presence: that is to say, the more amino acids for DA, the less amino acids transporters are available for 5HT amino acids. In short, this DA-5HT unbalance illustrates one of the facets of the DA-5HT interaction in which the low 5HT level, associated with depression, prevents the serotoninergic system to exert its inhibitory role to imped the over drive of the dopaminergic system ( Esposito et al., 2008 ).

Chronic stress and anxiety may further aggravate this problem by increasing the cortisol level and thus creating a loop with dopamine activating the sympathetic nerve system and reinforcing the reward seeking behavior while down-regulating 5HT -1a receptor, which decreases the serotonin signaling and increases the depression likelihood ( Lustig, 2017 ). These findings are in line with studies that associate stress, anxiety and depression with Internet gaming disorders ( Wenzel et al., 2009 ; Griffiths et al., 2012 ).

Fundamentally, from a phylogenetic standpoint, it is likely that pleasure has contributed more than happiness ( Pollard, 2003 ; Lustig, 2017 ), which could explain the stronger drive of the short term gratifications over the quest for medium and long term euthymia. In sum, this suggests that identifying the possible confusion between the mentioned emotional states associated with the addictive activities may contribute to deepen the understanding of this sort of disorders and consequently to explore new therapeutic options.

The emotional states (and their consequences) associated with VG as felt and perceived by chronic users led to thorough interrogations of health professionals. Several studies intended to explore this issue by focusing on the individual characteristics of addict players. For instance, the general level of happiness appears to be a firm candidate to predict addiction to VG playing ( Hull et al., 2013 ). In effect, it has been shown that gaming disorders are positively correlated with depression and loneliness and negatively correlated with well-being ( Lemmens et al., 2011 ; Sarda et al., 2016 ). These two studies relied on a eudaimonic notion of well-being (i.e., life satisfaction, a life well lived). Thus, based on the mentioned definitions of pleasure and happiness, on the semantic net (see Annex ) and on the analysis made in the next section (Pleasure and Happiness), in this research well-being is assimilated to happiness due to the considerable common ground shared between these two concepts. In line with these findings, another study highlights the association between high frequency of online gaming with depression and social phobia ( Wei et al., 2012 ). Similar results were found in a study in which, compared with no addict Internet user, Internet addict subjects used to play online games reported significantly more depressive symptoms ( Geisel et al., 2015 ).

From a psychological symptoms standpoint, it has also been observed that when playing VG, addict gamers have a sense of well being or euphoria while playing VG, inability to stop the activity, craving more time at playing VG, feeling empty, depressed, irritable when not playing VG, with all the pernicious consequences these symptoms have on the private, social and professional life ( Griffiths, 2008 ). At glance, the coexistence of well being and craving might come across as paradoxical, although the mentioned work ( Lustig, 2017 ) on this issue provides some elements of answer to this finding.

Using a video game clip as a stimulation trial, it has been studied ( Kim et al., 2018 ) the craving state of chronic users when playing VG through measures resulting from addiction questionnaires and several bio signals such as eye blinking, eye saccadic movements, skin conductance and respiratory rate. The results of this work showed that during the stimulation trial video game there was a decrease of eye blinking rate, eye saccadic movement rate and mean amplitude of the skin conductance response whereas there was a significant increase of the mean respiratory rate.

Another study ( Lu et al., 2010 ; as cited in Kim et al., 2018 ) focused on a group of individuals with high risks of developing Internet gaming disorders (IGD) and their sympathetic nervous system responses. When using Internet in this experiment, increases were observed in blood volume, body temperature and respiratory rate. Heart rate (HR) has also been used as a reliable indicator of craving in subjects with SUD ( Kennedy et al., 2015 ).

Pleasure and Happiness

The psychophysiological and brain mechanisms of pleasure and happiness are quite complex and probably more research is required to better discerning these processes. Some studies have underlined that the hedonic system includes wanting and liking and each of these two emotional states may operate in a conscious and unconscious mode ( Berridge and Kringelbach, 2011 ). Studies indicate that unconscious wanting would function as a conditioned desire involving the nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area, hypothalamus and dopamine; on the other hand the unconscious liking would relate to a sensory hedonic dimension associated with the nucleus accumbens, ventral pallidum, periaqueductal gray, amygdala, opioids and cannabinoids ( Kringelbach and Berridge, 2009 ; Berridge and Kringelbach, 2013 ). The same studies show that conscious wanting would relate to cognitive incentives, subjective desires and dopamine whereas conscious liking would be linked with subjective pleasures, opioids and cannabinoids; both would involve the orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate and insular.

It has been shown that the level of activation of some of the mentioned areas would be altered in subjects with Internet gaming disorders: sensing craving for gaming is associated with an increased activation of the left orbitofrontal cortex (correlated with desire for VG play) and with a decreased activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (probably linked with the reduced capacity to inhibit craving for gaming) ( Wang et al., 2017 ).

There might be a relation between the complexity of these brain circuits linked to these emotional states and the polysemy of these two terms, happiness and pleasure , which may contribute to the possible confusion between them. Indeed, the intense interrelation between them finds expression in subtle distinctive features and in some connotations with vague borders, to the extent that these words might be regarded as almost synonyms. The semantic analysis of these two terms produced in this research intends to show their core meanings, their nuances and the possible intersections between them ( Procter, 1985 ). Trying to unravel and to understand these two emotional states is not a recent endeavor. For instance, Greek thinkers approached the notion of happiness as a state constituted by two components: Hedonia (pleasure) and Eudaimonia (a life well lived) ( Kringelbach and Berridge, 2009 ).

Due to its nature, defining and studying happiness is a quite uneasy task. Although progress has been made on this rather recent area of study, there is still a lack of consensus when it comes to defining this concept. Some authors distinguish fluctuating happiness (self centered) from durable, authentic happiness (self-transcendent) ( Dambrun et al., 2012 ). Another study uses the value-arousal model on emotions to define it, according to which happiness results from a positive valence, high arousal and engaged and satisfied in life ( Cipresso et al., 2014 ). Lustig (2017) emphasizes the time perspective as one of the distinguishing traits between these two emotional states by opposing the short-term logic of pleasure to the longer-term characteristics of happiness .

These last two studies are quite illustrative of the differences with regard to defining happiness , in particular when it comes to including or not pleasure in it. Whilst there seems to be a consensus on “life satisfaction,” “connecting with others” and “contentment” as the main traits of happiness , it is less clear whether pleasure is part of it. Usually, in the literature there are two understandings to articulate these emotional states: either both ( happiness and pleasure) are seen as inseparable concepts or happiness is regarded as a state free from distress (‘liking’ without ‘wanting’) ( Kringelbach and Berridge, 2010 ; Berridge and Kringelbach, 2011 ; Loonen and Ivanova, 2016 ; Lustig, 2017 ). Whether or not pleasure is included in the definition of happiness , to the best of our knowledge there is no study that includes craving (intense desire, longing) as a trait of happiness .

Thus, based on the mentioned definitions and on the association between craving and arousal ( Kennedy et al., 2015 ), craving for playing VG may subscribe itself within the realm of pleasure , but stands outside of the happiness’ sphere.

Within the frame of this research, Pleasure refers to the hedonic reward processes driven by a desire to obtain a gratification that can lead to craving in certain circumstances ( Berridge and Kringelbach, 2011 ). Pleasure has been associated with the dopaminergic circuit which can, in certain circumstances, function in an addictive mode and can affect also habits, conditioning, motivation and executives functions such as decision making, inhibitory control, etc. ( Volkow et al., 2011 ).

Happiness is understood as contentment and euthymic state, in line with a happy emotional state defined by a positive valence and low arousal ( Jatupaiboon et al., 2013 ). Physiologically, this state implies a reposed mind; akin to the relaxation state measured through the brain electrical activity ( Teplan and Krakovskà, 2009 ). In the literature this mood is related to the serotoninergic circuit ( Lustig, 2017 ).

To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing questionnaire focusing on the association between VG and pleasure/happiness. Thus, our study required a preliminary phase to design such self-report tool whose aim is to explore the perceived emotional states (pleasure/happiness) associated with VG play.

As far as we know, distinguishing the perception of these two emotional states in the frame of an addiction has not been yet the object of formal research, hence the reduced literature on this specific issue, in particular the experimental one.

Consequently this research may be seen as a preliminary study, which aims at examining the possible confusion between pleasure and happiness within the addiction sphere. VG addiction has been chosen to explore the possible occurrence of this perceptional distortion. Emotional reactions of VG addicts and VG non-addicts were gauged via self-report scales and physiological data (Heart rate and Relaxation state) acquired by a range of biosensors.

Resulting from the mentioned background, it is hypothesized that addict VG users:

Are likely to confuse the notions of pleasure with that of happiness when associating their emotional states to VG play.

The results of this study are expected to show that addict VG users associate happiness with VG activities while feeling craving for playing accompanied by an increased HR and a low relaxation level. Given the shortage of previous researches on the specific issue related to the confusion between pleasure and happiness in VG addiction, the outcome of this study is approached in an exploratory manner.

From a therapy standpoint, this project intends to explore alternatives to deal with this kind of scenarios. More specifically, at the cognitive level, the idea is finding means to develop patients’ insights into these emotional states and thus increasing their ability to handle them.

Materials and Methods

Preliminary phase: design of the “pleasure and/or happiness and vg” questionnaire, participants.

In total 105 VG players participated in this survey, out of which 61 filled all the questionnaires required for the design of the “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” questionnaire. The mean age of these 61 participants was 24.28 and the standard deviation 5.48. There were 33 males (54.1%) and 28 females (45.9%). The mean of playtime during working days was 4.49 h and the standard deviation 6.82, and during holidays and weekends 4.68 h and the standard deviation 3.13.

An online survey was run via video game forum and Reddit site (network of communities with common interests). The purpose of this survey was to evaluate the internal coherence of our self-report tool (Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG) relative to two validated questionnaires (on Hedonic tone and Happiness). Thus the survey consisted in filling the three questionnaires. Participants completed anonymously and voluntarily the questionnaires through their online gamers groups.

Two validated and known questionnaires were used to construct the ‘ Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG’ questionnaire through which the emotional states associated with VG activities were evaluated: the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS) ( Snaith et al., 1995 ), an assessment tool of hedonic tone, and the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ) ( Hills and Argyle, 2002 ). The French version of these two questionnaires was used ( Loas et al., 1997 ; Bruchon-Schweitzer and Boujut, 2014 ).

The abbreviated SHAPS is composed of 14 items to assess the hedonic tone and the absence of it. The answer scale for each item offers four possible options ranging from ‘Definitely agree’ to ‘Strongly disagree.’ The OHQ is extensively used to evaluate the individual level of happiness. For each of its 29 items, the answer scale has 6 options going from ‘Strongly disagree’ to ‘Strongly agree.’

Several items of the SHAPS and the OHQ are quite adapted to the VG paradigm and lend themselves to be contextualized. For example, the first item of the SHAPS questionnaire is formulated as: “I would enjoy my favorite television or radio program.” In this case “television or radio program” is replaced by “video game.” An example of OHQ concerns the item “I am very happy,” which became “I am very happy when playing VG.” So, these kinds of items constitute the questionnaire whose aim is identifying the emotional states that users associate with VG. Initially, eight items were adapted to VG from these two questionnaires: four items from SHAPS and four items from OHQ. The answer scale provides with six possible options ranging from ‘fully disagree’ to ‘fully agree.’

Statistical Analysis

In order to ensure the usefulness of the designed self-report tool, an Alpha Cronbach test was run on the results of this survey to measure the internal coherence between the ‘VG and Pleasure/Happiness’ and the two other questionnaires (SHAPS and OHQ). Moreover, it has been examined whether there is a correlation between VG play frequency and the two areas explored in this survey: the general happiness level (OHQ) and the emotional states associated with VG (‘Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG’).

The Experiment

The study was announced through the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) scientific social media as well as via leaflets available in public cyber games centers in Brussels. Gamers interested to participate in this study had to answer an on-line survey ( N = 163), in which the following data was gathered: age, play frequency, name of VG played and a validated test to assess the gaming addiction level (Gaming Addiction Scale, Lemmens et al., 2009 ). The French version of this scale was used ( Gaetan et al., 2014 ). Being used to play to at least one of these five popular VG (Fornite, Overwatch, League of Legends, Counter-Strike or Rocket League) and an age ranging from 18 to 70 years old were the inclusion criteria. Competing against another team and playing in groups are the common characteristics of these VG. The exclusion criteria were having vision impairments and neurological problems.

Two groups of gamers were invited to participate in this study: addict users (AU) and non-addict users (NAU). None of the invitees met the exclusion criteria. The selection and recruitment were based on the score obtained in the test on gaming addiction, resulting in: AU ( N = 12) and NAU ( N = 17) (7 females and 22 males, ranging from 19 to 29 years old). They were all French speakers Belgian residents. The mean age was 23 and the standard deviation of 3. The difference between sexes in terms of VG addiction is not statistically significant (3/7 AU females and 9/22 AU males, U 45.5, p = 0.130).

This experiment took place within the frame in the usability laboratory of the Research Centre of Work and Consumer Psychology, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

Before the experiment all the procedures were explained to participants and their consent was asked on formal basis. They were informed that:

– This experiment aims at better understanding the video game phenomenon (without mentioning the issue relative to the emotional states and VG).
– They have to fill several questionnaires (in French).
– Some non-invasive artifacts are set to gather measurements on physiological signals while they watch video clips.
– The Ethical Committee of ULB approved this study in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

The participants were welcome into the testing room of the laboratory by the examiner. They were seated and given an informed consent form. Once the form was read and signed, the study procedure was explained. Then, the Electroencephalogram (EEG) headset was placed onto the participant’s head and an impedance check was run.

Before the beginning of the experiment, each participant chose his/her favorite VG he/she uses to play among the five initially proposed. During the experiment, the examiner observed the participant through a one-way-glass, avoiding interference.

Finally, participants were thanked for their participation, compensated and given information on obtaining the results of the study. The whole experimental run took around 1 h.

Prior to starting the operational phases of the experiment, all devices are set to initiate the baseline recording of all the physiological signals.

Six phases compose this experiment ( Figure 1 ). In each phase of the experiment the emotional states associated with VG were examined either through self-report questionnaires or via physiological measures. The physiological measures were recorded during the visioning of two sorts of video clips: VG clips whose aim was to induce craving and neutral video clips (documentaries on nature) intending to reduce craving.

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Synthetic view of the experimental phases.

The six experimental phases:

(1) “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” (six items): Participants were invited to fill the self-report questionnaire designed in the preliminary phase.
(2) Watching a neutral clip during 2 min while recording physiological signals related the mentioned two emotional states. This phase intends to decrease craving in participants.
(3) Craving score: Participants were asked to express their craving state to play their favorite VG via a one item self-report questionnaire.
(4) Watching a VG clip during 2 min while recording the same physiological signals as in phase two related to the mentioned emotional states. The objective of this phase is to increase craving in participants.
(5) Craving score: the same procedure and self-report tool as in phase 3 were applied.
(6.1) “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” (Three bipolar items).
(6.2) “Key words and VG”: participants were invited to associate a list of words to VG activities.
(6.3) “Pleasure and VG or Happiness and VG” (one bipolar item): participants were asked to associate one of the two emotional states to VG play.

The cycle from the 2nd phase to the 5th phase was repeated five times for each participant. In each of these five cycles, different episodes of video clips (the chosen VG and the neutral clip) were shown randomly so as to avoid the habituation phenomenon and minimize the influence that the order of the sequence of episodes could have on participants’ responses.

– Experimental groups: AU and NAU

The Gaming Addiction Scale (GAS) ( Lemmens et al., 2009 ; Gaetan et al., 2014 ) was used to constitute these groups. As a tool to measure game addiction, GAS possesses significant assets. Lemmens et al. (2009) showed the validity of this scale from a cross population point of view and its one-dimensional characteristic resulting from the factorial analysis. In addition, in the same study it has been shown the concurrent validity of GAS insofar as this scale is associated with play frequency as well as with psychological features related with game addiction, namely decreased level of social competence and of well being, and high level of aggression and of loneliness. Moreover, high scores in GAS are also linked with attentional deficiencies in response inhibition when perceiving game cues ( van Holst et al., 2012 ; in Khazaal et al., 2016 ), which converges with results produced by other researches associating impulsivity and cue reactivity with other addictive behaviors ( Billieux et al., 2011 ; Khazaal et al., 2012 ; Torres et al., 2013 ). Relative to other game addiction measurements, GAS has the most complete covering of the Internet gaming disorder criteria of the DSM-5 ( Petry et al., 2014 ). Although it was initially designed for adolescents, there are substantial evidences to state that GAS is applicable for young adults too ( Khazaal et al., 2016 ).

Each of the seven items of this scale starts with the question “How often in the last 6 months…?” to explore the impact of video gaming on different aspects of the subject’s life. The possible answers are: never, rarely, sometimes, often and very often. The first two answers score 0, the last three answers score 1. If the total sum of these scores is 4 or higher, the subject is considered an AU according to this scale.

– The experiment

In the first phase, participants were asked to fill the “ Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” questionnaire composed by six items: three items that tie Pleasure (P) and VG, three items that tie Happiness (H) and VG (six-items in total).

The answer scale for each item was composed of six options ranging from ‘Fully disagree’ to ‘fully agree.’ Each of these six items is answered separately, thus the overall possible results of this questionnaire can be: (1) P and VG > H and VG or (2) H and VG < P and VG or, (3) P and VG = H and VG.

In the second phase (Neutral video clip), two physiological signals related to Pleasure and Happiness were recorded. Based on the correlates found between HR and craving, this physiological signal is used as an indicator of arousal ( Kennedy et al., 2015 ).

Despite the difficulty in defining and in measuring happiness , the brain electrical activity is recorded (Electroencephalogram, EEG) mainly to detect the relaxation state. This state appears close to the notion of happiness; in the literature it is accepted that the increase of alpha waves is correlated with mental and physical rest ( Teplan and Krakovskà, 2009 ).

In the third phase, participants were asked to express their craving state to play his/her favorite VG. The statement employed in this self-report tool was: “State your present craving for gaming.” Participants have to choose the answer that best fitted their self-assessment among six possible answers offered by the scale ranging from “I do not feel any craving for gaming” to “I feel a very strong craving for gaming.”

In the fourth phase (VG clip), the same physiological signals as in the second phase were measured.

In the fifth phase, the same procedure to assess craving for gaming as in the third phase was employed.

In the sixth phase, three other self-report questionnaires were submitted to participants and used to evaluate the association between the mentioned emotional states and VG:

– “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” (three bipolar items). The same six items of the “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” questionnaire used in phase 1 were presented in a bipolar structure: three items opposing “Pleasure and VG” vs. “Happiness and VG.” For example, if in the six items questionnaire the items “I would enjoy my favorite VG” (Pleasure/VG) and “I am happy when playing VG” (Happiness/VG) are presented separately, in this questionnaire they are part of the same item: “I would enjoy my favorite VG” vs. “I am happy when playing VG.” By doing so, participants are encouraged to choose which of their emotional states (Pleasure, Happiness) is associated with VG playing. That said, the scale has an uneven number of options (five) between the two extremes, the central option representing the equal association of Pleasure and Happiness with VG play. Thus, the overall possible results are identical as in phase 1.
– “Key words and VG”. Participants were asked to choose three words (out of ten) that they associate most with their VG activities. These 10 key words come from the semantic mapping elaborated in this research of the terms used in the formal statements defining pleasure and happiness in this study. For example, some words from the happiness sphere are contentment and well being , whereas desire and joy relate to pleasure . Besides, they are in line with both definitions Lustig’s (2017) . Only the ten words (French version) were shown to participants. Although the possible results are similar to those of six-item “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” questionnaire and three-bipolar item “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” questionnaire, this time the same association (emotional states and VG) is tackled via key words directly linked to the two studied emotional states ( Pleasure, Happiness ) but without mentioning them. This self-report format intends to gain accuracy in the identification of gamers’ emotional states associated with VG.
– “Pleasure and VG or Happiness and VG”. The written definitions of both pleasure and happiness , based on work Lustig’s (2017) , were shown to participants. Then they were asked to read carefully these definitions and to take them into account when answering one bi-polar item that opposes “Pleasure and VG” vs. “Happiness and VG.” Unlike in the three-bipolar items questionnaire, the answer scale between these this bipolar item has an even number of options (six). This time is an “either/or” choice they are faced with, therefore the possible results are: P and VG < H and VG or P and VG > H and VG. Basically this questionnaire intends to strengthen consistency in participants’ insights into this issue by inviting them to confront their perception of their emotional states associated with VG play with the mentioned formal definitions, comparable to an emotions reappraisal process ( Seay and Kraut, 2007 ).

In short, four self-report questionnaires (see Annex ) aim at exploring this dependent variable (association between these two emotional states and VG play) by looking at the consistency of participants’ answers to the different formats of questions. The questions’ formats are:

– Pleasure and/or happiness can be associated with VG (six independent items);
– Pleasure and/or happiness can be associated to VG (three bipolar items);
– Pleasure and/or happiness can be associated to VG through key words defining the two emotional states (without mentioning the words pleasure and happiness );
– Pleasure or happiness can be associated to VG (written explicit definitions of pleasure and happiness are given to participants).

This approach aims at exploring the coherence between the self-reported answers and the physiological signals, as a means to objectivize the perceived emotional states associated with VG play by the two mentioned groups of participants (addict gamers and non-addict gamers).

The previously mentioned theoretical framework indicates that the notion of craving relates to an arousal state that could lead to an addictive pattern and consequently stands out of the realm of happiness.

Expected Results

Based on the analysis made on this issue previously as well as on the hypothesis of this study, the expected results could be synthesized as shown in Table 1 .

Summary of the expected results.


Addict Users (AU	Happiness and VG > Pleasure and VG	– VG clip increasing effect on craving – VG clip increasing effect on HR – VG clip decreasing effect on relaxation	Happiness and VG > Pleasure and VG	Happiness and VG > Pleasure and VG	Pleasure and VG > Happiness and VG
Non Addict Users (NAU)	Pleasure and VG > Happiness and VG		Pleasure and VG > Happiness and VG	Pleasure and VG > Happiness and VG	Pleasure and VG > Happiness and VG

– Self-Report Questionnaires

For the self-report questionnaires, it is expected that, compared to NAU, the AU group:

– In “Pleasure and/or happiness associated with VG” (six independent items) associates more happiness than pleasure with VG play.
– Reports more craving for playing after watching VG clip.
– In “ Pleasure and/or happiness associated to VG” (three bipolar items) associates more happiness than pleasure with VG play.
– Associates VG play with key words more related to happiness category than to those of pleasure .
– In “ Pleasure or happiness associated to VG” associates VG play with pleasure (like NAU).
– Physiological Signals

It is expected to observe an interaction between the groups (AU, NAU) and the conditions (VG clip, Neutral clip). Namely, it is assumed that visioning the VG clips has an effect on AU increasing HR while decreasing Relaxation.

After verifying the normality of distributions (Kolmogorov–Smirnov), the means comparison between the two groups (NAU, AU) was calculated for self-report questionnaires measuring the association between VG and Pleasure/Happiness (Mann–Whitney U ) for the six-items “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG,” the three-bipolar items “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” and the one-bipolar item “Pleasure and VG or Happiness and VG.” The Chi square was used for “Key words and VG.” In order to determine whether there are differences between independent groups over time and to identify possible interactions between the two independent variables on the dependent variables, a two-way mixed ANOVA (within and between subjects) was used for the craving scores and the physiological signals recorded ( Table 2 ).

Synthetic view of independent and dependent variables.


– Addict Users (AU) – Non-Addict Users (NAU)	– Happiness and/or Pleasure associated to VG (6-items)	– Heart Rate and Relaxation – Craving score	– Happiness and/or Pleasure associated to VG (3-bipolar items) – Key words associated to VG – Happiness or Pleasure associated to VG (1 bipolar item)

The experiment was run on a desktop computer with an Intel Core i7 quad processor and 8 GB RAM, running Windows 10. Stimuli were displayed on a 22-inch monitor and resolution was set to 1680 × 1050. Participants used standard mouse and keyboard as input devices. EEG measurement includes detecting the fluctuation of voltage potential generated by large group of neurons in the brain. The EEG signal was obtained through the use of EPOC headset. This device allows to remotely getting data of brain activity using a wireless set of fourteen electrodes (AF3, AF4, F3, F4, F7, F8, FC5, FC6, T7, T8, P7, P8, O1, O2) sampled at 128 hertz.

The relaxation state was measured by one of the composite metrics of the Emotiv software. HR was measured by using Schimer 3 (Photoplethysmography). The I. Motions software version 7.1 (Imotions Inc. 2018) was used to recording the mentioned data and presenting stimuli to participants. The statistical analysis was conducted with IBM SPSS statistics v.25.

Design of the “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” Questionnaire

The Cronbach’s alpha (0.859) showed a high internal coherence between the SHAPS and three items (out of four) of the “Pleasure and VG” within the “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” questionnaire. The fourth item has been disregarded; its presence would have dropped the Cronbach’s alpha to 0.685. The internal coherence obtained between the OHQ and the “Happiness and VG” items within the “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” questionnaire was quite high for the four items concerned (alpha 0.901). However, the internal coherence between these four items was too weak due to one item (alpha 0.407). The exclusion of this item raised the alpha significantly (0.836). Consequently, only the consistent items have been kept (six out of the initial eight items: three on “Pleasure and VG,” and three on “Happiness and VG,” see Annex ).

Moreover, it has been examined whether there is an association between VG play frequency and the two areas explored in this survey: the general happiness level (OHQ) and the emotional states associated with VG via the “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” questionnaire. The constitution of the group of frequent gamers and that of non-frequent gamers was determined by calculated median (18 h per week). In line with several studies linking problematic gaming and well-being and life satisfaction, a moderate negative correlation ( R = −0.249; p = 0.056) was found between VG high play frequency and the OHQ scores ( Griffiths, 2008 ; Lemmens et al., 2011 ). In addition, there is a marginal significant difference [ T (58) = 1.923; p = 0.059] between frequent VG users and non-frequent VG users relative to the OHQ scores.

The “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” Six-Items Questionnaire

The Kolmogorov–Smirnov outcome indicates the need for using a non-parametric test to compare the two groups. The Mann–Whitney test shows that there was no significant difference observed between the AU and NAU relative to association between VG play and pleasure (item 1. U = 78, p = 0.30; item 3. U = 75, p = 0.24 and item 5 U = 86, p = 0.49) ( Table 3 ).

Descriptive statistics of “Pleasure and/or Happiness associated with VG” (6-items): [Pleasure (P), Happiness (H) associated with VG].


Item 1 P/VG	NAU	17	13.69	231.00
	AU	12	17.00	294.00
Item 2 H/VG	NAU	17	11.35	193.00
	AU	12	20.17	242.00
Item 3 P/VG	NAU	17	13.41	228.00
	AU	12	17.25	207.00
Item 4 H/VG	NAU	17	12.18	207.00
	AU	12	19.00	228.00
Item 5 P/VG	NAU	17	14.06	239.00
	AU	12	16.33	196.00
Item 6 H/VG	NAU	17	11.03	187.50
	AU	12	20.63	247.50
Mean P/VG	NAU	17	12.88	219.00
	AU	12	18.00	216.00
Mean H/VG	NAU	17	10.59	180.00
	AU	12	21.25	255.00

In contrast, there is a significant statistical difference in the three items where AU associate VG play with happiness (item 2. U = 40, p = 0.005; item 4. U = 54, p = 0.034 and item 6. U = 34, p = 0.002) more than NAU.

Craving Scores

Results in craving ( Table 4 and Figure 2 ) show a statistically significant interaction F (1,25) = 4.78 ( p = 0.038). Indeed, relative to the neutral clip, the VG clip condition has significantly amplified the reported craving difference between the two groups (AU craving score > NAU craving scores).

Descriptive statistics for self-report Craving.


Neutral clips	NAU	2.27	1.09	0.222	–0.954	17
	AU	2.02	0.98	1.617	2.567	10
	Total	2.17	1.03	1.062	1.248	27
VG clips	NAU	4.11	0.82	–0.169	0.135	17
	AU	4.96	0.52	–2.523	7.414	10
	Total	4.42	0.82	–1.271	2.528	27

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Self-report craving (groups: AU, NAU; conditions: Neutral clips, VG clips).

Physiological Signals Measurements

The AU’s relaxation is significantly lower [ F (1,24) = 8.616; p = 0.007] than NAU’s in both conditions (Between-Subjects Effects). The relaxation level decreases in both groups during the VG clip. On the other hand, conditions do not influence the relaxation difference between the two groups [ F (1,24) = 0.001; p = 0.98] ( Table 5 and Figure 3 ). Furthermore, there is a significant statistical gender difference in both conditions (Neutral clip: Male 17.36, Female 7.57. U = 25, p = 0.008 – VG clip: Male 17.09, Female 8.43. U = 31, p = 0.019).

Descriptive statistics: Relaxation index (EEG EPOC, Emotiv software).


Neutral clips	NAU	0.33	0.07	–0.873	1.095	15
	AU	0.24	0.09	1.256	3.303	11
	Total	0.29	0.08	0.292	0.460	26
VG clips	NAU	0.31	0.05	–1.380	1.390	15
	AU	0.23	0.07	1.633	4.688	11
	Total	0.28	0.07	0.292	2.630	26

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Relaxation [groups: AU, NAU; Conditions: (1) Neutral clips, (2) VG clips].

Concerning the other physiological variable (HR) ( Table 6 and Figure 4 ), there is an effect of VG clips on both groups [ F (1,15) = 20.802; p < 0.001]. Nevertheless, there was no statistically significant interaction [ F (1,15) = 0.028; p = 0.86], nor an effect of addiction on VG clip condition [ F (1,15) = 0.083; p = 0.777]. It is important noting that due to corrupted data the number of valid subjects taken into account was 17 (8 AU and 9 NAU).

Descriptive statistics: Heart Rate (HR).


Neutral clips	NAU	78.36	7.94	0.054	–0.292	9
	AU	79.51	8.36	2.130	5.013	8
	Total	78.90	7.90	0.972	1.530	17
VG clips	NAU	80.29	9.20	–0.502	0.219	9
	AU	81.58	9.34	2.037	4.661	8
	Total	80.89	8.99	0.614	1.535	17

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Heart Rate [groups: AU, NAU; Conditions: Neutral clips (1), VG clips (2)].

The “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” Three-Bipolar Items Questionnaire

The descriptive statistics of this three-bipolar items questionnaire ( Table 7 ), indicate that the AU group linked VG activities more with happiness than the NAU group. The Mann–Whitney test shows a significant difference between these two associations ( U = 47; p = 0.013).

Descriptive Statistics: Pleasure/VG vs. Happiness/VG (3 bipolar items).


Mean	NAU	17	11.76	200.00
	AU	12	19.58	235.00
Bipolar item 1	NAU	17	13.29	226.00
	AU	12	17.42	209.00
Bipolar item 2	NAU	17	13.91	236.50
	AU	12	16.54	198.50
Bipolar item 3	NAU	17	13.3	221.50
	AU	12	17.79	213.50

Key Words and VG

Results state the absence of significant difference between AU and NAU in associating the key words from the Pleasure cluster with VG play, and words from the Happiness cluster with VG (Chi square, p = 0.942) ( Table 8 ). When taking words separately, the biggest gap between the two groups relates to the word well-being (belonging to the happiness cluster) associated to VG play (AU: 25%, NAU: 0%).

Descriptive statistics: number of words per category (Pleasure, Happiness) associated to VG play chosen by NAU and AU.


%	NAU (N17)	17 × 3 words = 51	19.60	47.05	33.33	100
%	AU (12)	12 × 3 words = 36	22.22	47.22	30.55	100

“Pleasure and VG or Happiness and VG” (One Bipolar Item Questionnaire With Written Definitions)

The outcome of this questionnaire indicates that there is no significant difference between AU and NAU ( U = 102, p = 1). Both groups have clearly associated VG play with pleasure ( Table 9 ).

Descriptive statistics: Happiness/VG or Pleasure/VG (1 bipolar item, with Definitions of Pleasure and Happiness shown to subjects).


NAU	4.82	0.636	17
AU	4.58	1.379	12

The following scheme summarizes the outcomes of the self-report tools used to evaluate the association between the emotional states (Pleasure and Happiness) with VG play ( Table 10 ).

Synthetic view of self-report results (Emotional states associated with VG play).


Results	AU associated more Happiness to VG than NAU (Significant difference)	AU associated more Happiness to VG than NAU (Significant difference)	Both groups associated Pleasure and Happiness to VG (No significant difference)	Both groups associated Pleasure to VG (No significant difference)

The following table indicates the mean, standard deviation and Skewness and Kurtosis values of the self-report craving, the HR and the relaxation level for both groups in the two conditions ( Table 11 ).

Descriptive statistics for self-report Craving, Relaxation, Heart Rate.



Neutral clips	NAU	2.27	1.09	0.222	–0.954	17
	AU	2.02	0.98	1.617	2.567	10
	Total	2.17	1.03	1.062	1.248	27
VG clips	NAU	4.11	0.82	–0.169	0.135	17
	AU	4.96	0.52	–2.523	7.414	10
	Total	4.42	0.82	–1.271	2.528	27

Neutral clips	NAU	0.33	0.07	–0.873	1.095	15
	AU	0.24	0.09	1.256	3.303	11
	Total	0.29	0.08	0.292	0.460	26
VG clips	NAU	0.31	0.05	–1.380	1.390	15
	AU	0.23	0.07	1.633	4.688	11
	Total	0.28	0.07	0.292	2.630	26

Neutral clips	NAU	78.36	7.94	0.054	–0.292	9
	AU	79.51	8.36	2.130	5.013	8
	Total	78.90	7.90	0.972	1.530	17
VG clips	NAU	80.29	9.20	–0.502	0.219	9
	AU	81.58	9.34	2.037	4.661	8
	Total	80.89	8.99	0.614	1.535	17

Overall, the results of this study show that AU associate happiness to VG while reporting craving for VG play and having a low relaxation level. These outcomes observed in this experiment constitute a bundle of arguments that argue in favor of the hypothesis of this study ( Lustig, 2017 ). Indeed, in AU, the high self-report craving score and low Relaxation level during VG clips visioning do contrast with their association of VG more with happiness than with pleasure in the mentioned “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” questionnaires (six-items and three-bipolar-items) relative to NAU. Consistent with previous findings in this area, these four measurements highlight the coexistence of the perception of happiness linked with VG play combined with elements related to pleasure such as craving ( strong desire, wanting ) ( Pollard, 2003 ; Griffiths, 2008 ; Waterman et al., 2008 ). Since craving and low Relaxation are rather incompatible with the mentioned notion of happiness ( Pollard, 2003 ; Waterman et al., 2008 ; Lustig, 2017 ), these indices may raise the question as to how accurate are AU’s insights into their emotional states associated to VG play and may support the idea that AU’s perception of their emotional states is somewhat distorted. In the literature, VG addiction would be linked with impairment in the self-regulation process, this finding may be linked with the difficulties AU have to observe and evaluate their own behavior ( Seay and Kraut, 2007 ). Besides, the mentioned results suggest that VG clip effect on self-report craving would depend on the addiction level.

Considering that sensing happiness and craving are probably experienced as positive emotions by AU, and that usually negative and positive emotional events are reported to last longer and shorter respectively ( Gil and Droit-Volet, 2012 ; Tian et al., 2018 ), the arousal triggered by motivating stimuli, may modify the time perception and could mediate the effect of emotions on behavior ( Gil and Droit-Volet, 2012 ). In other words, the level of excitement produced by VG play could make AU underestimate the time spent at this activity, which may be perceived as an alleviating evasion free from stressors and possibly assimilated with the notion of happiness . This hypothetic mechanism would match one of the possible motives for online gaming ( Demetrovics et al., 2011 ). In this sort of precognitive process, several studies mentioned the involvement of the amygdala in interaction with the thalamus together with the dopaminergic system and a poor inhibitory control ( Gil and Droit-Volet, 2012 ; Petry et al., 2015 ).

It is noteworthy underlining that the bipolar structure of the three-items questionnaire increases the relevance of this outcome. In effect, although participants were incited to choose between the two emotional states opposing each other (VG and pleasure vs. VG and happiness), like in the six-items questionnaire, AU again did choose happiness as the main emotional state linked with VG play. This outcome would further state the difference between these two groups when it comes to associating the two emotional states to VG play. Besides, this would reveal to an important extent that the possibility whereby pleasure and happiness were regarded as synonyms could be overcome. In other words, this outcome shows that the similarity of meanings of these two concepts did not prevent these groups to make a clear choice. Finally, the similar scores obtained in the two questionnaires (six-items and three-bipolar items “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG”), in spite of the different disposition of the same items in these two instances, strengthen the value of the designed scale (“Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG play”).

The absence of interaction between the two independent variables on HR may be explained by the fact that a higher arousal would take place in AU when playing VG rather than when watching at VG clips. Moreover, the reduced number of valid subjects when measuring this physiological parameter (due to technical recording problems) could have contributed to this outcome too. The fact that the independent variables did not produce the expected different HR effects on AU and NAU could also be linked with one of the limitations of this study: the difficulty in integrating in this research the interaction between HR and depression (as mentioned, VG addiction is positively correlated with depression) ( Griffiths et al., 2012 ) that may lead to HR index modifications ( Cipresso et al., 2014 ). In sum, this issue illustrates that the difficulty to circumscribe the notion of happiness is also reflected in the complexity to establish physiological correlates so as to objectify this emotional state ( Cipresso et al., 2014 ).

Associating the clusters of key words with VG did not produce the expected results. Since AU linked VG with both pleasure and happiness , may be these words played a clarification role and facilitated Au’s insights into their emotional states when playing VG. It could also suggest the inadequacy of this self-report tool. However, it is probably worthwhile mentioning an index related our hypothesis: when taking words separately, the word “well-being” associated with VG play was chosen by 25% of AU and by 0% of NAU.

The outcome of the binary question in the “Pleasure and VG or Happiness and VG” one-item questionnaire with the definitions of pleasure and happiness ( Pollard, 2003 ; Deci and Ryan, 2008 ; Waterman et al., 2008 ; Kashdan et al., 2008 ; Lustig, 2017 ) shows that AU ceased associating happiness to VG play and instead, like NAU, clearly linked pleasure to their cyber activity. Caution is required in the analysis of these results because the validity of this questionnaire remains to be demonstrated. Having instructed participants to answer the bipolar question by taking into account the written definitions of the two measured emotional states, did modify the result of AU group relative to both questionnaires (“Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” six-items and three bipolar items). Within the framework of this careful approach, it could be hypothesized that explicit definitions of the two emotional states induced AU to adopting an introspection mode through a more pronounced involvement of cortical brain structures, akin to a therapeutic process in which the appropriate verbalization of pleasure and happiness facilitates the clarification of one own feeling as a prerequisite to elaborate more adaptive behavior in spite of the constraining psychological characteristics usually associated with VG addicts ( Kim et al., 2007 ; Kashdan et al., 2008 ; Wenzel et al., 2009 ).

This may be regarded as an example of emotions reappraisal which would increase accuracy of insights into one-self, reduce distorted perception of emotions and assess the adequacy of the behavioral response to a given stimulus ( Compare et al., 2014 ). In other words, it could be posited that the mentioned explicit definitions have somewhat constrained AU to use a cognitive approach to examine their emotional states related to VG play rather than merely relying on the sensory information as it tends to occur when sensing craving for video gaming ( Wang et al., 2017 ).

Moreover, the result of this one-item binary questionnaire would further support the hypothesis. In effect, the studied interrelation between hedonia and eudaimonia suggests that a highly rated hedonic activity (VG play in this case) is usually related with low rating in eudaimonia ( Waterman et al., 2008 ). This interpretation would fit with the resounding association between depression and gaming disorders ( Lemmens et al., 2011 ; Hull et al., 2013 ; Sarda et al., 2016 ; Bonnaire and Baptista, 2019 ) together with the confusion between pleasure and happiness occurring in addictive activities (AU associated VG with happiness in the first two self-report questionnaires and ended linking pleasure with VG in the last one-item questionnaire) ( Pollard, 2003 ; Lustig, 2017 ).

Overall, the more explicit the definition of pleasure and happiness and the narrower the choice offered by the self-report questionnaires, the less confusion of emotional states associated with VG occurred in AU group members whereas NAU invariably associated pleasure to VG as illustrated in Figure 5 .

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Shift of AU perception of their emotional states associated with VG according to the self-report tools.

Based on these results, it could be postulated that the tendency of AU to perceive happiness when feeling craving and pleasure linked to VG play, might be moderated by a clarifying cognitive process on the meaning of these studied emotional sates, which would interfere with the behavioral habits linked to the urge of gaming ( Ko et al., 2009 ).

The findings resulting from “Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG” six-items questionnaire could be regarded as an illustration of the confusion that AU might have when linking the studied emotional states with VG play. Unlike NAU, the significantly higher association between VG play and happiness expressed by AU matches the perceived level of well being reported by individuals with Internet gaming disorders ( Griffiths, 2008 ). On the other hand, apart from well-being , the same author cites euphoria as the other main emotional state that addict gamers may report when playing VG. Whilst happiness and well-being rely on each other to define themselves, euphoria would convey the notion of intense excitement, which would rather stand in the pleasure sphere. Moreover, in medical terms, euphoria refers to a feeling of great elation, not necessarily founded (especially when resulting from substances consumption). Since AU also associated VG with pleasure although they did it to a lesser extent than with happiness, it could hypothesized that the feeling of intense excitement derives, at least partially, from satisfying the craving for VG play, which in turn could engender relieve experienced as a sense of well-being ( Loonen and Ivanova, 2016 ).

The impact of VG clips on AU craving and relaxation scores underlines relevant aspects of this study, which support the hypothesis of this research. First of all, it highlights the incongruent perception of AU’s emotional states whereby both craving and happiness coexist as emotional states associated with VG play. Thus, this finding constitutes a relevant component of the confusion that consists in placing a short-term pleasure (VG play) within the sphere of happiness. Besides, the low relaxation state of AU would correspond with their self-reported craving and, therefore, further highlights the contrast between the perceived happiness associated with VG play and the indicators measured during the VG clip visioning (high craving level and low relaxation state level). Finally, it is noteworthy mentioning that relaxation was the only measure in this study where gender differences were observed. The lower relaxation level in female gamers in both conditions might be related to the gender expectation about playing VG in society at large and in the gamers’ community in particular ( Shen et al., 2016 ). Indeed, since female gamers are a minority in these sorts of VG ( Shen et al., 2016 ) (in line with our sample: 7 females, 22 males), it could be posited that they feel under scrutiny in an activity regarded as male oriented.

Putative Reasons of Distorted Perceptions of Emotional States Associated With VG Addiction

The social dimension of popular VG has been identified as one of the factors that may explain the addiction pattern ( Hull et al., 2013 ). In this kind of competitive games, improving the required abilities and obtaining better results would be part of the key motives for VG play ( Demetrovics et al., 2011 ), that usually generates the appreciation and the acceptance of the other group players. Getting this sort of feedback from others can be motivating indeed, especially when taking into account the correlation between IGD and social isolation, low self-esteem, traumatic experiences, depression and low life satisfaction ( Petry et al., 2015 ; Schimmenti et al., 2017 ; Bonnaire and Baptista, 2019 ). In turn, these psychosocial characteristics are probably related also with the high impulsivity level in VG addicts ( Billieux et al., 2011 ), which has been found to be associated with difficulties in interpersonal relationships ( Ryu et al., 2018 ). Thus, it would seem that VG activities are, at least partially, sating the mentioned social and psychological deficiencies. This suggests that AU’s emotional states related to VG play may be quite contrasting, in which components of happiness (i.e., interacting with others, fellowship and belonging to a group) are intertwined with those of short-term pleasure (i.e., craving for getting quick results, praise from others, etc.) ( Loonen and Ivanova, 2016 ). Now, craving for undertaking these cyber activities to respond to the mentioned social isolation issues places this emotional state much closer to the ‘pleasure governed by desire’ than to ‘atmosphere of good fellowship’ (Happiness) ( Lawrence et al., 2014 ; Lustig, 2017 ).

The flow, defined as the emotional state embracing perception distortion and enjoyment produced by VG activities, is another element that can create confusion in gamers’ insights into their emotional states ( Chou and Ting, 2003 ; Hull et al., 2013 ). As described in the mentioned study, experiencing flow implies not only losing the notion of time but also merging oneself with the VG actions. In these conditions, the gamer’s senses and attention are in the here and now , with little or no awareness about sources of stress relative to past, present or future events. In this line, the motivation to experience immersion has been associated with problematic gaming ( Billieux et al., 2011 ). Considering the fact that loneliness and depression have been identified as predictors of VG addiction and of Internet Gaming Disorders ( Hull et al., 2013 ; Sarda et al., 2016 ), it is understandable why in gamers’ mind experiencing flow could equate this feeling with a relieving emotional state ( Loonen and Ivanova, 2016 ). This sense of alleviation could match the notion of happiness as free from distress ( Kringelbach and Berridge, 2010 ; Loonen and Ivanova, 2016 ) if it resulted from the quality of real life being lived. Instead, in AU, this relieving and enjoyable emotional state would be engendered by a virtual activity (VG), possibly used as a means to escape from stress and to forget tensions ( Demetrovics et al., 2011 ; Bonnaire and Baptista, 2019 ). In the literature, the escaping strategy is a way to find relieve from stressors through the engagement in a pleasant activity, which may end up representing a space of happiness ( Seay and Kraut, 2007 ).

In sum, the incongruence lies in the coexistence of regarding VG as a space of happiness while using VG to get quick pleasures and relief. Individuals suffering from this disorder tend to pursuit short-term pleasures rather than long-term gains ( Dong and Potenza, 2015 ). Being driven by short-term gratifications rather belongs to the reward-seeking realm ( Waterman et al., 2008 ; Lustig, 2017 ). Thus, this pleasant emotional state could be associated with the arousal linked to a reward seeking behavior through which quick and positive results are obtained, which in turn reinforce the mentioned behavior. Probably, this intense arousal situates itself within the sphere of pleasure as a dysfunction in the rewarding system ( Pollard, 2003 ; Berridge and Kringelbach, 2013 ; Lustig, 2017 ) and not in that of happiness in spite of the relieving benefits it provides.

Another possible reading on why the emotional states generated by these cyber activities are linked with happiness may be related to the way in interpreting the experienced sensations. This representation is probably shaped by the individual background, experiences, culture, etc. From a brain mechanism stand point, conscious liking does not limit it self to a sensory outcome, it is also translated into a subjective liking through the recruitment of cognitive processes ( Berridge and Kringelbach, 2013 ). Indeed, these authors state that conscious pleasure rating is sometimes detached from affective reactions as people can elaborate reasons to themselves for how they should feel. Therefore, associating VG with happiness may be the result of a rationalization process to reduce the cognitive dissonance. In other words, the unwished consequences of the VG addiction pattern (increased stress, problems at working, studying, socializing, etc.) ( Griffiths et al., 2012 ) probably produce an increasing amount of pressure (due to the difficulty to reduce gaming time, guilt, etc.) that can become overwhelming if it lasts too long. Consequently, if the affected individuals are unable to master the yearning for VG, perceiving VG activities as a source of well being may reduce the mentioned pressures insofar as the notion of happiness usually suggests a socially acceptable mood, a legitimate aim and a safe emotional state. In this perspective, equating happiness with satisfying craving and with short-term pleasure might contribute to feed the addictive pattern ( Lustig, 2017 ).

In a broader perspective, the rationalization process described in the previous paragraph may be also related with coping strategies to deal with adversity. For instance, it has been observed that problematic gamers may use VG play as a means to cope with stressors and to enhance mood ( Demetrovics et al., 2011 ). An association has been found between stressful life events and addiction to Internet activities ( Schimmenti et al., 2017 ), with the mediating role of psychological needs satisfaction and the moderating role of coping styles ( Dongping et al., 2016 ). Several theories and studies support this approach that strives for a more holistic understanding of this issue. The self-determination theory postulates that humans share three universal psychological needs ( Deci and Ryan, 2000 ; in Dongping et al., 2016 ): autonomy (i.e., feeling of being self-determining in one’s behavior), relatedness (i.e., the feeling of connectedness to others) and competence (i.e., the feeling of dealing with issues in a competent manner). Besides, individuals can adopt different strategies to cope with adversity ( Lazarus and Folkman, 1984 ; in Dongping et al., 2016 ). According to Zheng et al. (2012 ; in Dongping et al., 2016 ), the positive coping approach is the set of strategies aiming at problem solving, support seeking and cognitive restructuring to address the stressors. On the other hand, according to the same authors, the negative coping consists in strategies such as blaming, social withdrawing, denial and disengagement so as to avoid the stressful situations. Now, a parallel can be established between these two coping styles and the brain activities involved in the goal-directed learning and the habit learning.

The goal-directed learning would correspond to the positive coping style insofar as it focuses on the relationship between an action and the motivational value of the outcome, and is associated with the activation of the prefrontal cortex, the dorsomedial striatum and the dorsomedial thalamus ( Ballaine and Dickinson, 1998 ; in Schwabe et al., 2012 ). On the other hand, habit learning, would be linked with the avoidant coping style. This learning process encodes the relationship between a response and preceding stimuli without taking into account the outcome caused by the response and is related to the activation of the dorsolateral striatum ( Yin et al., 2004 ; Tricomi et al., 2009 ; in Schwabe et al., 2012 ). According to Schwabe et al. (2012) , stressful situations may modulate the processes involved in instrumental learning in a way that may produce the shift from goal-directed learning to habitual learning.

In line with these findings, it has been observed that, like cocaine cues, psychological stress induction can generate the same craving response in a cocaine abusers population ( Bradley et al., 1989 ; Wallace, 1989 ; in Sinha et al., 2000 ). The relevance of these observations lies in the fact that both SUD and behavioral addictions (including gaming disorders, Han et al., 2011 ) recruit to an important extent common brain regions and produce similar physiological patterns, as quoted in the introduction of this document.

Considering the association between unhappiness and VG disorders mentioned earlier, it could be posited that the gamers concerned could not overcome the causes of their unhappiness. Indeed, studies suggest that subjects with Internet gaming disorders embark in VG play more to deal with negative affect than to achieve a good performance in the game ( Schimmenti and Caretti, 2010 ; Billieux et al., 2013 ; both in Bonnaire and Baptista, 2019 ). In this scenario, based on the mentioned studies, a low level of happiness would imply that psychological needs are somewhat unmet and associated with the avoidant coping style together with the habit learning. Furthermore, this pattern is supported by compensatory Internet use theory, which postulates that adversity can operate as a stimulus to seek psychological comfort (i.e., satisfying the psychological needs via the cyberspace) ( Kardefelt-Winther, 2014 ; in Dongping et al., 2016 ).

In other words, the psychological comfort engendered by the VG activities in this population of gamers, combined with the characteristics of the avoidant coping style (denial, social withdrawal, avoiding stressful situation, etc.) and with the traits of the habitual learning (actions’ outcomes are disregarded, with little or no awareness of actions’ consequences), might explain, at least partially, the biased perception of the emotional states in AU ( happiness associated to VG) and of their causes of craving for VG. This assumption suggests that online gaming might not be the cause of VG addiction, but rather that VG excessive use could be a compensatory strategy to deal with pre-existing psychological characteristics and deleterious social context ( Kowert et al., 2015 ). For instance, some studies suggest that traumatic experiences, poor emotions regulation, elements of impulsivity and the motivation to experience immersion in a virtual world would increase the likelihood of IGD and Internet addiction ( Billieux et al., 2011 ; Schimmenti et al., 2017 ).

In sum, it would seem as if for AU the mentioned behavioral pattern is a manner to mitigate the difficulties to deal with stressors. This interpretation would be in line with the motives for play in problematic gaming ( Demetrovics et al., 2011 ). Through a massive survey these authors observed seven dimensions that would cover the entire spectrum of motives for VG play in all sort of on line games: escape (from reality), cope (with stressors, playing as a way to improve mood), fantasy (trying new identities/things in a virtual world), skills development (improving concentration, coordination, new skills) recreation (relaxing aspects of gaming), competing (sense of achievement), and social (knowing/being/playing with others). This study suggests that there would be positive and beneficial motives for playing (entertaining gaming) as well as harmful ones (problematic gaming). The correlations between these factors appear to shed light on the positive and negative aspects of gaming. Whilst the weakest correlation is between escape and recreation (also low correlation was found between escape and both, skills development and competition), the strongest correlations were observed between escape and cope and fantasy. These results would indicate that escape and coping are motives associated with problematic gaming, however, the authors argue that escapism would facilitate the coping efforts to deal with stressors and negative moods. Moreover, it is noteworthy underlining that escapism had the lowest mean score in this study among the seven dimensions, which would match with the prevalence level of problematic gaming mentioned previously ( Griffiths et al., 2012 ).

Probably, regarding AU, the accuracy in perceiving emotional states, the ability to deal with stressors and the quality of insights into oneself are dimensions that deserve much attention in the therapeutic processes.

Therapeutic Implications

A cognitive-behavioral approach may contribute to the recovery process by enabling problematic gamers to explore the motives that lead them to abuse of VG play ( Orzack et al., 2006 ; in Griffiths, 2008 ). Developing strategies to tackle stressors appears to be a therapeutic priority for treating this disorder. Consequently, this axis of work includes the understanding of the environmental demands that are perceived as exceeding the individual abilities to handle them. In this line, ensuring the accuracy of the individual’s insights into the emotional states linked to the sources of stress as well as to the game habit could increase the awareness of the underlying issues to be addressed. In particular, deciphering the conditioned desires (unconscious wanting) and the hedonic dimension (unconscious liking) ( Kringelbach and Berridge, 2009 ; Berridge and Kringelbach, 2013 ) linked to VG play may produce added value information for understanding and overcoming the problematic gaming pattern. Within this frame, it could be hypothesized that distinguishing between happiness and feeling alleviated could be beneficial to the therapeutic process, although it remains to be demonstrated.

Overall, this sort of therapeutic approach may contribute to reduce the alexithymia, usually associated with this kind of disorders ( Kandri et al., 2014 ).

In problematic internet/gaming several studies have explored and highlighted to role of alexithymia and its links with other therapeutic issues. For instance, it has been shown that alexithymic individuals are more associated with Internet addiction than non-alexthymic ones ( Baysan-Arslan et al., 2016 ). In this research, the authors consider that the difficulty in identifying and differentiating emotions that characterizes alexithymia may lead individuals with this affliction to regulate their emotional states via their addictive activities.

Another study showed that IGD would be related with alexithymia, anxiety and depression ( Bonnaire and Baptista, 2019 ).

Schimmenti et al. (2017) observed that traumatic experiences (mainly in males) and traits of alexithymia (mainly in females) were associated with Internet addiction symptoms, which may enable a tailored prevention and treatment approach. Besides, Internet addiction (including online role-playing) would be correlated with alexithymia, dissociation (protecting one-self in a more pleasant created reality as a means to deal with traumatic experiences) and insecure attachment ( Craparo, 2011 ).

However, the causal link in the association between alexithymia and Internet addiction would still need to be verified, as indicated by Mahapatra and Sharma (2018) . Moreover, discerning the nature of alexithymia remains an uneasy task: this emotional identification and differentiation disorder might be regarded as a stable personality trait that could increase risks of mental disorder development, and also may be seen as a defense mechanism to cope with psychological stressors ( Mikolajczak and Luminet, 2006 ; in Mahapatra and Sharma, 2018 ).

Apart from alexithymia and traumatic memories, high urgency (a dimension of impulsivity defined by the proneness to have strong reactions usually tied with negative affect) and being motivated to experience immersion in a virtual world would be psychological predictors of problematic multiplayer online games ( Billieux et al., 2011 ). These findings led the authors to posit that individuals with the two mentioned traits are more likely to use the immersion in the virtual world as a means to avoiding facing real life adverse issues. According to the authors, this behavior will lead to a deleterious outcome (culpability and embarrassment as a result of feeling unable to deal with problems), which in turn is experienced as a pernicious condition likely to activate behaviors related to high urgency and immersion.

Like the previously mentioned clinical issues, this vicious loop reinforcing escapism also appears to be a therapeutic target.

Considering the possible association between alexithymia and problematic gaming as a manner to regulate emotions ( Baysan-Arslan et al., 2016 ; Bonnaire and Baptista, 2019 ), the Emotion Regulation Therapy (ERT) might strengthen the therapeutic process. The aim being that the observed difficulties in Internet (including VG) addicts to identifying emotions and regulating affects ( Caretti et al., 2010 ; in Craparo, 2011 ) could be, at least partially, overcome through the ERT process. In effect, Compare et al. (2014) , show that ERT operates as a means to reappraise emotions that trigger actions leading to negative consequences. Reappraising emotions is associated with the involvement of the medial prefrontal cortex, which attenuates the amygdala activation and, thus, reduces the intensity of negative affect; these two areas being coordinated by the orbitofrontal cortex ( Compare et al., 2014 ). Since AU would be prone to associate happiness with VG play, ERT might facilitate the perceptional change enabling to link VG play with pleasure [ Caretti and Craparo, 2009 ; in Craparo (2011) consider Internet addiction (including VG) “as a syndromic condition characterized by a recurrent and reiterated search for pleasure derived from dependence behavior, associated with abuse, craving , clinically significant stress, and compulsive dependence actions despite the possible negative consequences”]. Within this approach, it may be postulated that enabling problematic gamers to familiarize with and to see the self-transcendent notion of happiness could favor the distinction between pleasure and happiness and would render them less vulnerable from impulses and from environmental circumstances ( Dambrun et al., 2012 ). The idea is to facilitate the shift from wanting more than liking (or even without liking) toward liking with little or without wanting ( Berridge and Kringelbach, 2011 ). Furthermore, regarding motives for playing, it could be posited that helping problematic gamers to identify and distinguish the emotions tied to escaping/coping from those related to recreational gaming ( Demetrovics et al., 2011 ), would be a necessary condition to orient effectively the ERT toward the escaping issues and targeted emotional states requiring therapeutic input. In this line, based on the previously mentioned studies in this section, it might be useful exploring the possible link that the excessive time spent in cyber activity could have with past traumatic experiences, insecure attachment, impulsivity, anxiety and depression.

In conclusion, this study suggests that the mentioned confusion of emotional states (pleasure and happiness) associated with addiction ( Lustig, 2017 ), could take place in subjects with VG addiction, and potentially in the entire spectrum of addictions. Moreover, from a cognitive therapeutic perspective, it shows the potential benefits of reappraising emotions as a means to contribute to the emotional distortion reduction.

Limitations

The small sample of this study demands cautiousness when making generalizations from its results. Besides, watching VG clips rather than actually playing VG might be less stimulating for chronic gamers and could have influenced the physiological values recorded during the clip visioning phases. That said, many gamers do attend to public competitions to watch other gamers playing VG. Although, to the best of our knowledge, there is no information available to affirm that there are VG addicts in these audiences.

We also faced the usual paradox when assessing craving via self-report tools. Indeed, participants were asked to judge their craving intensity for VG play whereas sensing craving often may imply a compromised self-awareness level and thus a self-assessment whose value needs to be interpreted carefully.

Although the GAS is a validated tool, which has shown its usefulness in screening addict gamers, having complemented this measurement with thorough diagnostic-driven interviews run by specialists when choosing participants to form the AU and the NAU groups would have strengthened the selection process.

The participants’ selection was centered on the gamer status (gaming addiction/non-addiction and names of games usually played) rather than on the cultural and/or educational background of the persons. Future researches could complete this approach by assessing the possible cultural and educational bias in perceiving the studied emotional states.

Moreover, including more physiological parameters related to pleasure and happiness could further complete the self-reported information and may enable reaching more robust results.

Prospective Research

Further research is required to better understand the relationship between the studied emotional states and this addiction. For instance, since VG addiction decreases with age ( Wittek et al., 2016 ) a longitudinal study could reveal the factors (psychophysiological, environmental, etc.) that operate that change. Moreover, VG addiction is only one area of the spectrum of addictions. Undertaking similar researches on other addictions and with larger samples could also contribute to deepening the comprehension of this issue. Finally, keep enhancing the scales that measure pleasure and happiness may provide with more accurate information about the range of nuances intrinsic to these two emotional states.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Université Libre de Bruxelles Ethical Committee. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

LG developed the proposal and the conception of the original project research, searched and articulated the theoretical background, participated in the study and protocol design, elaborated the results interpretation, assembled all the chapters of the study, and in charge of the manuscript writing. ND was involved in the scientific and publication management, participated – as the Research Center Manager – in the study and protocol design, and in charge of the configuration and writing of the physiological measures. JL, as a member of the Research Center, was involved in the study and protocol design, also involved in the configuration of physiological measures, managed the experimental phases in the laboratory, and elaborated the data analysis. CL, as a full Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Director of the Research Center for Work and Consumer Psychology, assured the scientific and publication management, participated in the study and protocol design, in charge of making the critical reviews of the manuscript along the process, and involved in the manuscript writing.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to Maastricht University (Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology) as well as Université Libre de Bruxelles (Faculty of Psychological Sciences and of Education – Research Center for Work and Consumer Psychology). This work was performed as a partial fulfillment toward the International Master in Affective Neuroscience of Maastricht University and the University of Florence.

Abbreviations

AU	addict users
EEG	Electroencephalogram
ETR	Emotions Regulation Therapy
GAS	Gaming Addiction Scale
H	happiness
HR	heart rate
I.G.D.	Internet Gaming Disorders
NAU	non-addict users
OHQ	Oxford Happiness Questionnaire
P	pleasure
SHAPS	Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale
VG	video games.

Self-Report Questionnaires

– Six items Questionnaire: Pleasure and/or Happiness associated with VG play (Items 7 and 8 were suppressed after the preliminary phase)

(1) I enjoy playing video games.
(2) I am happy when I play video games.
(3) I would find pleasure in my video game activities.
(4) I find video games amusing.
(5) I enjoy playing my favorite video game.
(6) I often experience joy and exaltation when playing video games.
(7) I would feel pleasure when I receive praise from other people on my capacity to play video games.
(8) I don’t have fun when playing video games with other people.

fully disagree disagree slightly disagree slightly agree agree fully agree

<———I——————I——————I————————I——————I—————I———>

– Questionnaire on Craving for playing VG

– After having watched this clip I feel craving for playing video games.

– Three bipolar items Questionnaire: Pleasure and/or Happiness associated with VG play

Bipolar items.

(1) I enjoy playing video games I am happy when I play video games

I——————I——————I——————I—————I

(2) I would find pleasure in I find video games amusing my video game activities

(3) I enjoy playing my favorite I often experience joy and exaltation video game when playing video games

– Ten key words [resulting from the semantic mapping of pleasure (P) and happiness (H)]: 3/10 words to be associated with VG play

– Joy
– Craving
– Well-being
– Impulsivity
– Fellowship
– Desire
– Fun
– Contentment
– Gratification
– Serenity

Pleasure cluster: joy, craving, impulsivity, desire, fun, gratification.

Happiness cluster: well-being, fellowship, contentment, serenity.

– One bipolar item Questionnaire: Pleasure or Happiness associated with VG play (with explicit definitions)

Happiness : emotional state of lasting contentment.

Pleasure : transient emotional state when satisfying a desire, a craving.

A bipolar item

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Object name is fpsyg-10-02894-i001.jpg

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Does Video Gaming Have Impacts on the Brain: Evidence from a Systematic Review
The game genres examined were 3D adventure, first-person shooting (FPS), puzzle, rhythm dance, and strategy. The total training durations were 16-90 h. Results of this systematic review demonstrated that video gaming can be beneficial to the brain. However, the beneficial effects vary among video game types.
The Playing Brain. The Impact of Video Games on Cognition and Behavior
3.1. Effect of Video Games on Cognitive Functions. Any modern VG requires an extensive repertoire of attentional, perceptual and executive abilities, such as a deep perceptual analysis of complex unfamiliar environments, detecting relevant or irrelevant stimuli, interference control, speed of information processing, planning and decision making, cognitive flexibility and working memory.
The Association Between Video Gaming and Psychological Functioning
Introduction. Video gaming is a very popular leisure activity among adults (Pew Research Center, 2018).The amount of time spent playing video games has increased steadily, from 5.1 h/week in 2011 to 6.5 h/week in 2017 (The Nielsen Company, 2017).Video gaming is known to have some benefits such as improving focus, multitasking, and working memory, but it may also come with costs when it is used ...
Frontiers
Introduction. Over the last 40 years, video games have increasingly had a transformational impact on how people play and enjoy themselves, as well as on many more aspects of their lives (Yeh et al., 2001; Zyda, 2005; Boyle et al., 2012).Contrary to popular belief, which sees male children or teenagers as main targets of the gaming industry, the average player is instead 30 years old, and the ...
Reaction time and working memory in gamers and non-gamers
With over 2.7 billion gamers worldwide 1, playing video games can be considered as one of today's favorite pastimes.As the popularity of video games grows, research interest in the effects of ...
The epidemiology and effects of video game addiction: A systematic
Objectives and research question. Video games, both offline and online, have been reported to have some benefits and consequences in the past. These outcomes have been linked to correlate with the factors around gaming. The present systematic review identifies and analyzes recent literature (in the past five years) on video games. ...
Setting the Game Agenda: Reviewing the Emerging Literature on Video
Research on the social and psychological impacts of video gaming has changed over time in response to the aging demographic of video game players, the growing diversity of video game players, increasing complexity and diversity of video games, and their growing entrenchment in the culture (Dale & Shawn Green, 2017).Scholarship on video gaming accelerated in the early 2000s, with common topics ...
A new look at the cognitive neuroscience of video game play
The majority of the research to date has contrasted the cognitive impact of playing first- or third-person shooter games (together dubbed "action video games") against the effects of playing other game types. Indeed, when the research began in the late 1990s, action video games placed a load upon the perceptual, attentional, and cognitive ...
Action Video Gaming and Attention in Young Adults: A Systematic Review
Existing research in action video games has increased in recent years due to the expansion of their use all over the world. Specifically, there is growing evidence about the positive development of the cognitive functions associated with the use of this kind of video game. Therefore, this work aims to explore the relationship between playing ...
Video games and board games: Effects of playing practice on ...
The worldwide popularity of playing practices has led to a growing research interest in games' impact on behavior and cognition. Many studies have already reported the benefits of both video games and board games for cognitive functions. However, these studies have mainly defined the term players according to a minimum play time or in connection to a specific game genre.
Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in
The research team examined survey, cognitive, and brain imaging data from nearly 2,000 participants from within the bigger study cohort. They separated these children into two groups, those who reported playing no video games at all and those who reported playing video games for three hours per day or more.
The Impact of Video Games on the Players Behaviors: A Survey
The great popularity of video games and their ability to make players indulge, the turnout of players to play video games dramatically led to transforming the video game industry from the entertainment side to be involved in most other areas in the life. ... Survey is a very common method for quantitative research in the social sciences [5]. It ...
(PDF) When and How Video Games Can Be Good: A Review of the Positive
Video games are a source of entertainment for a wide population and have varied effects on well-being. The purpose of this article is to comprehensively examine game-play research to identify the ...
Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal
Video games do affect social outcomes: a meta-analytic review of the effects of violent and prosocial video game play. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2014;40:578-89. Article Google Scholar
Metaanalysis of the relationship between violent video game play ...
Although hailed by some as conclusively demonstrating a link between violent video game play and aggression (), the Anderson et al. metaanalysis did not decrease skepticism among a vocal minority of researchers ().In a wide range of articles, Ferguson (2, 11-16) has leveled four criticisms at research purporting to show that video game violence (VGV) increases real-world aggression: (i) many ...
Video game play is positively correlated with well-being
1.2. Video game behaviour and well-being. Research and policymakers have been interested in a wide range of mental health outcomes of video game play. Mental health comprises both negative mental health (e.g. depression) and positive mental health.
Effects of computer gaming on cognition, brain structure, and function
The particular characteristics of video games driving these effects remain poorly understood. We critically discuss major challenges for the existing research, namely, the lack of precise definitions of video gaming, the lack of distinct choice of cognitive ability under study, and the lack of standardized study protocols. ...
Frontiers
Introduction. Video gaming is a very popular leisure activity among adults (Pew Research Center, 2018).The amount of time spent playing video games has increased steadily, from 5.1 h/week in 2011 to 6.5 h/week in 2017 (The Nielsen Company, 2017).Video gaming is known to have some benefits such as improving focus, multitasking, and working memory, but it may also come with costs when it is used ...
Video game play may provide learning, health, social benefits, review finds
Another stereotype the research challenges is the socially isolated gamer. More than 70 percent of gamers play with a friend, and millions of people worldwide participate in massive virtual worlds through video games such as "Farmville" and "World of Warcraft," the article noted. Multiplayer games become virtual social communities, where ...
Benefits of Play Revealed in Research on Video Gaming
Most of the video gaming research to date has focused on cognition. Correlational studies have consistently revealed that young people who play video games extensively have, on average, higher IQs ...
Are Video Games Good for You?
Essentially, the more you learn, the more your brain can adapt. "Like stimulants, video gaming can increase gray matter in the brain," says Dr. Manos. "Gray matter provides interconnectivity ...
All That Time Your Kids Play Video Games Could Lead to Career, Study
A recent Pew Research Center study finds that 85% of American teens play video games, and 41% play them at least once a day. Studies have shown that gaming can improve cognitive function and memory, while helping gamers to develop important soft skills.
The global games market will generate $187.7 billion in 2024
The global games market in 2024: Growth continues, slowly. At present, gaming is at a major inflection point. Earlier in 2024, we reported that average global playtime had declined substantially since the first quarter of 2021, and playtime hasn't grown since. A smaller number of big studios and games account for an increasing share of playtime hours and revenues.
Video game industry faces sluggish growth in 2024 amid weak console
Market research firm Newzoo said the games industry is set to grow 2.1% year over year, down from its earlier forecast of 2.8% year-over-year growth.
Indicateurs d'addiction au jeu PUBG chez les adolescents: Indicators of
In this article, we look at video game addiction in adolescents through research we carried out in two secondary schools, where we selected 06 cases from among the adolescents who said they spent a lot of time in front of their phone screens playing video games, particularly PUBG. ... To test our hypotheses, we used a semi-structured interview ...
How did Raygun qualify for the Olympics? Is she really the best
The 2024 Paris Olympics marked breaking's debut as a sport at the global event, with 36-year-old lecturer and breaker Rachael "Raygun" Gunn representing Australia for the first time.
US Judge Says 'Monopolist' Google Can't Avoid App Store Reforms
US News is a recognized leader in college, grad school, hospital, mutual fund, and car rankings. Track elected officials, research health conditions, and find news you can use in politics ...
Everything you need to know about breaking's Olympic debut
Phil Wizard, who qualified for the Games with his 2023 Pan American Games title, is expected to be Victor's top challenger for gold. Shigekix, a bronze medalist at the 2018 Youth Olympics, 2022 World Games, and 2023 World Championships, is close behind. Danis Civil ("Dany Dann"), 2022 European champion, is the top medal hope for the ...
Video Game Addiction and Emotional States: Possible Confusion Between
In total 105 VG players participated in this survey, out of which 61 filled all the questionnaires required for the design of the "Pleasure and/or Happiness and VG" questionnaire. The mean age of these 61 participants was 24.28 and the standard deviation 5.48. There were 33 males (54.1%) and 28 females (45.9%).
Tencent's Q2 Revenue up 8% on Recovery in Gaming Business
The world's largest video game company and operator of the WeChat messaging platform said revenue reached 161.12 billion yuan ($22.5 billion) in the quarter ended June 30.

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Video games and board games: Effects of playing practice on cognition

Introduction

Play time–based definition of players

Game type–based definition of players

Materials and methods

Participants

Cognitive tests

Mental flexibility.

Visual working memory.

Verbal working memory.

Visuospatial processing.

Player profiles

Relation between overall play time and cognitive performance

Relation between game-specific play time and cognitive performance

Limitations and perspectives for future research

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Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

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Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Introduction

Materials and Methods

Procedure and Instruments 2

Video Gaming

Reasons for playing

Game genres

Psychological Functioning

General psychopathology

Preference for solitude

Life satisfaction

Self-esteem

Self-efficacy

Social support and friends

Potentially Problematic Video Game Use and Psychological Functioning

Reasons for Playing Video Games and Psychological Functioning

Video Game Genre and Psychological Functioning

Predicting Potentially Problematic Video Game Use by Psychological Functioning Variables

Limitations and Future Directions

Ethics Statement

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Video game play may provide learning, health, social benefits, review finds

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Benefits of Play Revealed in Research on Video Gaming

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How did Raygun qualify for the Olympics? Is she really the best Australia has to offer?

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