Considerations for Future Research

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Considerations for Future Research

Considering the popularity of video games much more research needs to be done on this issue. Chambers and Ascione (1987) report that 100% of elementary and high school students surveyed had played video games at least once. That was more than 15 years ago. This is an obvious indicator that video games have entered the mainstream media, and that more research needs to be done on the effects of video games on adolescence. The majority of research thus far has been on the negative effects of video games, mostly due to the violence contained within. But the exact relationship is still undetermined, so research must continue. However, there are also many who hypothesize that video games can have a positive effect on youth, and believe that it is worth time and effort to explore these possibilities. Following are a few areas of research this author believes our time is best spent:

Therapy

Although the majority of video games are violent in nature, there are many emerging that take an intellectual standpoint. These include puzzle games such as the wildly popular Tetris. These types of games stimulate the mind by presenting challenges and puzzles to the player rather than enemies and worlds. Many play them just to keep the mind active and alert. This type of game-play has brought about the idea that video games can be used as a form of therapy. Some of them are relaxing and soothing, and they can be specifically altered to meet an individual patient's needs. A video game can be created to help a specific type of person, whether it is to help connect certain memory cells in the brain, or just help stimulate brain activity in general. Due to the programmatic nature in which video games are created, their possibilities of creation are endless. Gardner (1991) attempted the first research on this issue. He successfully used video games as a form of psychotherapy in children. This success has stimulated much research on this issue, but mostly dealing with mentally-ill or brain-damaged patients.

Eye-Hand Coordination

Playing many of the modern video games requires some sort of skill. The player is required to do quite a bit to "win." There are many things going on in the game at once. For example, the character may be running and shooting at the same time. This requires the real-world player to keep track of the position of the character, where he/she is heading, their speed, where the gun is aiming, if the gunfire is hitting the enemy, and so on. All these factors need to be taken into account, and then the player must then coordinate the brain's interpretation and reaction with the movement in their hands and fingertips. This process requires a great deal of eye-hand coordination and visual-spatial ability to be successful. A relationship has been shown between increased videogame playing and improvements to eye-hand coordination, as well as manual dexterity, and reaction time (Drew & Waters, 1986). Some true experiments would greatly help to support this claim.

Simulations

A simulation is interactive multimedia used to try to simulate some real world phenomenon. Many video games are nothing more than simulations. They are very closely related, and much research that refers to simulations could most likely apply to video games as well. The most well known simulations are flight simulators, which attempt to mimic the reality of flying a plane. All of the controls, including airspeed, wing angles, altimeter, and so on, are displayed for the player, as well as a visual representation of the world, and are updated in real time. For many years large corporations have used simulations to help train and better their employees. However, simulations have so much more possibilities. The United States government has released a game entitled America's Army, which simulates a real war-time experience. The government hopes to use it to help train the next generation of recruits.

Another use for simulations is to mimic the effects of nature. Many modern games use particle systems, thousands of tiny particles in three-dimensional space, which mimic natural phenomena such as rain, fire and smoke. Another popular use is to simulate flocking birds and schooling fish. An excellent example of this is seen in Pixar's Finding Nemo. With deeper research, these simulations can give us a better understanding of our world and our selves.