Video Games 1 Running head: VIDEO GAMES The Influence of Video Games on Social, Cognitive, and Affective Information Processing

Introduction Computer and console-based video games represent a pervasive form of leisure activity in industrialized nations beginning in early to middle childhood and continuing through adulthood. A recent representative sample of U.S. teens found that 99% of boys and 94% of girls had played video games example, a survey of over 600 eighth and ninth grade students found that boys averaged 13 hours per week and girls averaged 5 hours per week (Gentile, Lynch, Linder, & Walsh, 2004). In addition to the entertainment value of video games, evidence from a growing number of studies demonstrates that video games can produce positive pedagogical outcomes related to the development of health-related knowledge and Widespread use of video games begs the question of what intended and unintended effects they may produce. There is not a simple answer to this question. For instance, exposure to a specific type of game (e.g., violent action games) might have multiple effects (e.g., increases in aggression (Anderson & Bushman, 2001) and improvements in visuospatial attention (Green & Bavalier, 2003)). Because games differ on a range of dimensions, and engage various cognitive, affective, and behavioral systems, it is reasonable to expect that they will influence multiple information processing systems (Gentile & Gentile, 2008). Indeed, there is growing evidence for a wide range of video game effects that influence social and antisocial behaviors, cognitive styles, and affective processing (Barlett et al., 2009). Furthermore, some of these effects Video Games 3 may be moderated by personal characteristics (e.g., gender) or by social circumstances (e.g., parental involvement). Thus, the potential positive or negative effects of video game experience must be considered within the socio-cognitive-cultural context where the individual is embedded. With this in mind, the goals of the current chapter were twofold. First, we provide a review of the literature examining the effects of video games from the perspective of social, cognitive, affective, and education science. Second, we briefly consider how knowledge from social and cognitive neuroscience may serve to enhance our understanding of the effects of video game experience. Social Science Building on a nearly 50 year tradition considering the effects of violence in television and film, the last decade has witnessed the blossoming of research examining the impact of video game violence (VGV) on aggression. At least some of this interest seems to be motivated by the commonly observed association between high levels of consumption of VGV and violent crime …