e 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, 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;(link is external) also Gray, 2018).
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 