Risky to play Games? Research on Youth’s Cognitive Performance

“These findings suggest that video gaming may be associated with improved cognitive abilities involving response inhibition and working memory and with alterations in underlying cortical pathways.”

Taking risks – a natural youth behaviour

In a research article by Carmen Viejo and Noemí Toledano Fernández published in Neuroscience News, the authors make the following conclusions about youth taking risks:

“Making mistakes and taking certain risks is an adolescent process: the important thing is to learn from them. The brain development of this age group means that the pleasure of experimenting with certain risky behaviours prevents a proper assessment of their consequences. (…) Adolescents need to feel free to experiment and make mistakes, but they also need to know the limits and consequences. Although they want to be independent, they still need to feel cared for by the adults.”

Youth’s Cognitive Performance – more research required

This would actually be an interesting area of more research adolescents risky behaviour and what impact playing video games have on such behaviour. Does playing video games produce more awareness of consequences or does it trigger risky behaviour in real life? Could gamified interactive books improve awareness of risk and consquences? And at same time trigger the excitement of video games?

Written by
LarsGoran Bostrom©

Author of Learning Design in Practice for Everybody and developer of SOE PublishingLab