nsistently 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.
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 personalitycharacteristic referred to as openness to new experiences (Chory & Goodboy, 20