Japanese Government Researches Game Effects

Thanks to GamePro for their article discussing the Japanese Government's announcement that they plan to conduct a 10-year research study on the effects of video games upon children. According to the article, "The study will record their basic lifestyle patterns, including how much TV they watch and how many games they play, and the ministry will gauge their mental health and emotional personality through neural scans and questionnaires sent to their parents." Games in Japan are being implicated in "reduced brain-wave activity" and as a possible trigger in a Nagasaki kidnap/murder, so careful analysis is planned to see if game players really end up "...shunning social activity and losing one's temper easily."

Comments

The KEY word here is "VIDEO GAMES".

[tibike77]

Quoting from the "reduced brainwave" article:

The study monitored brain-wave activity in 240 Japanese men and women, ranging from six to 29 years old, as they played games for differing amounts of time. The test subjects that spent the least amount of time on video games exhibited large amounts of beta waves, indicating strong prefrontal cortex activity. People that played games from one to three hours a day three or four days a week had beta levels about on par with alpha levels, indicating reduced activity in the cortex, while those that played every day for over two hours at a time had nearly zero cortex activity at all.

[...]hypothesized that most games only exercise players' reflexive and perceptive abilities, leaving the rest of the brain idle in the process. "Many games strive to instigate feelings of nervousness or terror, leading to fears that they could affect the autonomous behavior of players," cautioned Mori in the report. "[Parents] should pay close attention to the type of games they let their children play and how much time they spend playing them."

Well, what they're NOT saying yet is WHAT kind of video games have been used when they made this test... playing something like "space invaders" or "tetris" can cause that reflex-response only... whereas increasingly complex games often make you think a lot more than react...(yeah, not always... Dungeon Siege, Diablo and other "real-time-RPGs" are the perfect examples of complex games inducing highly repetitive behaviour) I would really love to see that "tester" using some of the games I enjoyed playing while growing up to "test" his assumptions... for instance the X-Wing/TIE-fighter series (for the level of strategy and positioning involved, besides the actual shooting), several (actually... almost) all quest-type-games that were made before the mid-90's, single-player no-economy real-time-strategy game type missions (some missions in Warcraft 1 are the first that come to my mind)... and I bet all readers here *do* have some *really old* games they can relate with in this aspect...

And how about the "main article" quote:

The governmental ministry's study plans to study the development of one thousand children over the next ten years, as they mature from newborns to toddlers and grammar-school students. The study will record their basic lifestyle patterns, including how much TV they watch and how many games they play, and the ministry will gauge their mental health and emotional personality through neural scans and questionnaires sent to their parents. Using the information from the study, the ministry hopes to gain insight into the effects of entertainment choices on a young child's brain development. The results could also be used to improve educational methodology in Japan's public schools.

Games have also been implicated in the case of Shun Tanemoto, a four-year-old boy who was kidnapped and thrown off a multistory parking garage July 1 in the city of Nagasaki. The alleged assailant, a 12-year-old student whose name has been withheld by police, was reportedly an avid gamer who repeatedly abused the victim over the past few months. "This is a crime carried out by a child who played with nothing but video games, never with other people"

Well, yeah, can't blame them for doing that. Actually, quite a GOOD ideea.
What they left out though is the fact that they should ALSO record exactly WHAT games a kid plays... not only the kind, but how much time (s)he spends playing a certain game, and with whom, what they do and say, etc.
Myeah, "The Big Brother" syndrome at work...

I just hope they don't butcher the results of this test to please the people in power at the moment...