A large study by researchers at the University of Iowa has concluded that children who repeatedly play violent video games learn thought patterns that stick with them and influence their behavior as they grow older.
The Daily Mail is reporting that Douglas Gentile, an associate professor of psychology at Iowa State University and lead author of the study, said that when it comes to the brain and video games, it learns the same way as it would for solving math problems or playing the piano.
“If you practice over and over, you have that knowledge in your head. The fact that you haven’t played the piano in years doesn’t mean you can’t still sit down and play something,” Professor Gentile said.
“It’s the same with violent games – you practice being vigilant for enemies, practice thinking that it’s acceptable to respond aggressively to provocation, and practice becoming desensitized to the consequences of violence.”
Over time, researchers say children start to think more aggressively and when provoked at home or at school, will react much like they do while playing the games.
“Repeated practice of aggressive ways of thinking appears to drive the long-term effect of violent games on aggression,” the Mail reports.
The large study followed more than 3,000 children in the third, fourth, seventh and eighth grades for three years. Each year, they collected data and tracked how much time the child was spending playing games, how violent the games were, and what changes occurred in the child’s behavior.
The study appears to confirm rising fears about the impact of violent video games on children, especially in the wake of so many mass-murders that took place in the U.S. and abroad by youth who were obsessed with violent games.
For instance, Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, who was addicted to the violent Call to Duty game, slaughtered 26 people in December, 2012, 20 of whom were first-grade students. Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian shooter who gunned down 77 people in 2011, played the same game. James Holmes, who gunned down 12 people in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater last year, was an avid player of another violent video game known as World of Warcraft.
“Violent video games model physical aggression,” said Craig Anderson, Distinguished Professor of psychology and director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State and co-author of the report.
“They also reward players for being alert to hostile intentions and for using aggressive behavior to solve conflicts. Practicing such aggressive thinking in these games improves the ability of the players to think aggressively. In turn, this habitual aggressive thinking increases their aggressiveness in real life.”
The study was published in JAMA Pediatrics.
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