Trends in Video Game Play through Childhood, Adolescence, and Emerging Adulthood

Ream, Geoffrey L.; Elliott, Luther; Dunlap, Eloise

doi:10.1155/2013/301460

Cited by 30 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…The hypothesis that engagement with most genres would rise in childhood, peak at some point during the second decade of life, and decrease through emerging adulthood was generally upheld, as this relationship emerged in 12 of our 15 genre categories [23]. Findings about the relationship between problem play and age were, however, at variance with hypotheses.…”

Section: General Study Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 67%

“…Since players' peak video gaming years coincide with certain genres' peak popularity, "cohort effects" may be observable in genre-specific analyses even within a short span of years [23]. For instance, motion-control devices only recently became broadly available for home use, which may lead to younger players being interested in motion-control sports games [54].…”

Section: Genre-specific Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The present study, building upon earlier work that applied role incompatibility to the relationship between age and both video game engagement and PVGP [23], explores the relationship between age and both engagement with and problem play of specific video game genres among a sample of young adults who provided data on their video gaming behaviors in childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood. Like few studies before have ever done, it considers a full spectrum of video game genres.…”

Section: Genre-specific Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As emerging adults become young adults settled into adult roles with respect to school, work, and relationships, competing demands of those roles make previous use levels untenable and substance use decreases [22]. One study of the relationship between several video gaming indicators and age found a similar "role incompatibility" effect as several indicators of video game play (including PVGP) were observed to rise through childhood, peak in late adolescence, and either level off or fall through emerging adulthood, with an observed decrease in school/ work night video game play through emerging adulthood statistically explained by entry into higher education and full-time employment [23]. Consistent with expectations under a role incompatibility perspective, other studies found that middle school students intentionally use video games to regulate negative emotions and PVGP significantly decreases over time for adult video game players [8,18].…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

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A Genre-Specific Investigation of Video Game Engagement and Problem Play in the Early Life Course

2013

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Video games are an indelible part of the modern American early life course. A 2008 Pew Research Center survey found 99% of males and 94% of females' ages 12-17 play video games [1]. Video gaming begins in early childhood and continues through adulthood [2,3]. Video games can be a modality for instruction and clinical intervention [4,5], when written for these purposes. Video games facilitate cognitive development [6]. They provide experiences of freedom and competence [7], opportunities to socialize, a sense of mastery, a medium for identity development, and -not least -fun [8]. Video games focus attention in ways that are palliative for and mood disorders [9-11].There are also potential "downsides" to video gaming. It is hard to ignore that there is some association between violent entertainment video games and aggression, although the strong and deterministic connections often made in popular discourse (e.g., in the aftermath of school shootings) are probably not supported by the evidence [12,13]. Another issue, which is explored in research [14], addressed in clinical settings [15,16], and identified with by players themselves [17], is subjective experiences of video game "addiction. " It is usually referred to as "Problem Video Game Play" (PVGP) or by similar terms to make it possible to discuss the phenomenon without implying a position about its status as a "real" addiction [18,19].Given these connections between video games and health, there is naturally some interest in how video gaming behavior develops over time. One concept that may be useful for addressing this question is "role incompatibility. " Role incompatibility has been used to explain the curvilinear relationship between substance use and age through the early life course [20]. From a role incompatibility perspective, substance use rises through adolescence and peaks during emerging adulthood as youth discover substances' potential for regulating negative emotions through usual adolescent experimentation and then use them explicitly for this purpose in emerging adulthood as a way of coping with stresses of identity development and experimentation with adult roles [21]. As emerging adults become young adults settled into adult roles with respect to school, work, and relationships, competing demands of those roles make previous use levels untenable and substance use decreases [22]. One study of the relationship between several video gaming indicators and age found a similar "role incompatibility" effect as several indicators of video game play (including PVGP) were observed to rise through childhood, peak in late adolescence, and either level off or fall through emerging adulthood, with an observed decrease in school/ work night video game play through emerging adulthood statistically explained by entry into higher education and full-time employment [23]. Consistent with expectations under a role incompatibility perspective, other studies found that middle school students intentionally use video games to regulate negative emotions and PVGP sign...

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Section: General Study Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 67%

Section: Genre-specific Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Genre-specific Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 96%

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A Genre-Specific Investigation of Video Game Engagement and Problem Play in the Early Life Course

2013

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“…Another question arises as to whether the onset age of active video-game play can reliably capture video-game expertise, as some players who played actively at an early age could be presently inactive. Again, this is unlikely because large-scale longitudinal studies on video-game play trends from childhood to adulthood have established that video-game players are likely to maintain or even increase their gaming frequency once they begin playing actively (e.g., Ream, Elliott, & Dunlap, 2013). Finally, some might point to the problem of the unequal gender ratio between VGPs and nVGPs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age matters: The effect of onset age of video game play on task-switching abilities

Hartanto

Toh

Yang

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Although prior research suggests that playing video games can improve cognitive abilities, recent empirical studies cast doubt on such findings (Unsworth et al., 2015). To reconcile these inconsistent findings, we focused on the link between video games and task switching. Furthermore, we conceptualized video-game expertise as the onset age of active video-game play rather than the frequency of recent gameplay, as it captures both how long a person has played video games and whether the individual began playing during periods of high cognitive plasticity. We found that the age of active onset better predicted switch and mixing costs than did frequency of recent gameplay; specifically, players who commenced playing video games at an earlier age reaped greater benefits in terms of task switching than did those who started at a later age. Moreover, improving switch costs required a more extensive period of video-game experience than did mixing costs; this finding suggests that certain cognitive abilities benefit from different amounts of video game experience.Keywords Task switching . Video game . Onset age of active video game play . Switch costs . Mixing costs . Executive functions Video games are a ubiquitous entertainment medium, with an estimated 40 % of adults and 83 % of teenagers in the United States playing them regularly (Williams, Yee, & Caplan, 2008). Video games often present players with challenging situations that necessitate strategic monitoring, coordination of multiple task demands, and goal prioritization. For instance, first-person shooter games require players to tactically navigate a three-dimensional environment while eliminating multiple enemy targets that appear at random. Similarly, realtime strategy games typically immerse players in war-like scenarios requiring simultaneous management of several tasks, such as constructing edifices and deploying combat units to secure areas of a map or to invade and destroy opponents' territories and units. Success in such games requires continual tracking of various goals and the ability to shift flexibly from one task to another in the face of changing environmental demands. Therefore, an interesting question arises as to whether extensive video-game experience could facilitate task-switching performance (e.g., Cain, Landau, & Shimamura, 2012;Green, Sugarman, Medford, Klobusicky, & Bavelier, 2012).Task switching is the ability to shift back and forth between multiple tasks or mental sets (Monsell, 2003). The efficiency of task switching can be empirically measured using taskswitching paradigms, which yield two performance indicators: switch costs and mixing costs (Rubin & Meiran, 2005). Switch costs refer to the slower responses observed in taskswitch trials than in task-repeat trials, whereas mixing costs refer to the slower responses in task-repeat trials in mixed-task blocks than in task-repeat trials in pure blocks (Rubin & Meiran). These two costs reflect distinct control mechanisms in task-switching performance: namely, switch costs are...

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Depression, Internet Gaming Disorder, and the Moderating Effect of the Gamer-Avatar Relationship: an Exploratory Longitudinal Study

Burleigh

Stavropoulos

Liew

et al. 2017

Int J Ment Health Addiction

106

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Research into Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) literature largely uses cross-sectional designs and seldom examines gaming context-related factors. Therefore, the present study combined a cross-sectional and longitudinal design to examine depression and the gamer-avatar relationship (GAR) as risk factors in the development of IGD among emerging adults. IGD behaviors of 125 gamers (64 online gamers, Mage = 23.3 years, SD= 3.4; 61 offline gamers, Mage = 23.0 years, SD= 3.4) were assessed using the nine-item Internet Gaming Disorder Scale Short Form (IGDS-SF9; Pontes & Griffiths, 2015). The Self-Presence Scale (Ratan & Dawson, 2015) and the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) were also used to assess gamers' levels of GAR and depressive symptoms respectively. Regression and moderation analyses revealed that depression and the GAR act as individual risk factors in the development of IGD over time. Furthermore, the GAR exacerbates the IGD risk effect of depression.Keywords: Internet Gaming Disorder; Video gaming; Gamer-avatar relationship; Online addiction; Depression 3 IntroductionThe expansion of online gaming has led to excessive and potentially problematic gaming among a small minority of individuals (Pontes & Griffiths, 2014). The first commercial video games made their debut in the US in the 1970s, and by the early 1980s reports of video gaming addiction began to appear in academic literature (Kowert & Quandt, 2015). In the 2000s there was a substantial growth in video game playing, video game addiction, and associated research (Griffiths, 2015). As the medium has developed, it has enabled an online environment where gamers can gather virtually and create global online communities (Griffiths, 2015). Consequently, there has been a significant growth over the last decade of research examining both online video gaming and video game addiction (Griffiths, van Rooij et al., 2016; Petry et al., 2014; Petry et al., 2014).Various terms have been employed to define excessive online video gameplay such as 'problem video game playing', 'video game addiction', 'internet gaming addiction', 'pathological video game use', 'problem video game play', 'online gaming addiction', 'video game dependency', 'pathological gaming', and 'problematic online gaming ' (Pontes & Griffiths, 2014). The wide variety of names, definitions, and diagnostic instruments applied to problematic video gaming has resulted in inconsistencies among researchers considering the prevalence of the behavior (King, Haagsma, Delfabbro, Gradisar, & Griffiths, 2013; Kuss & Griffiths, 2012a; Petry et al., 2014). In May 2013, the American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2013) introduced the classification of Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD; i.e., the problematic use of online video games) as a condition worthy of further study in the latest (fifth) edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).Literature reviews have identified a diagnostic overlap between studies that had previously investigated problem...

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Trends in Video Game Play through Childhood, Adolescence, and Emerging Adulthood

Cited by 30 publications

References 51 publications

A Genre-Specific Investigation of Video Game Engagement and Problem Play in the Early Life Course

A Genre-Specific Investigation of Video Game Engagement and Problem Play in the Early Life Course

Age matters: The effect of onset age of video game play on task-switching abilities

Depression, Internet Gaming Disorder, and the Moderating Effect of the Gamer-Avatar Relationship: an Exploratory Longitudinal Study

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