Video-game Values

Continued from page 3

Even the authors of the aforementioned studies on violent video games are finding positive uses for information they've garnered about the brain. Some have used the information about biofeedback and brain activity during play to find ways to teach ordinary folks how to destress their lives. By putting players into stressful situations (not necessarily violent ones) dictated by popular games, participants then find that their control pad or joystick works more easily the less stress their body feels. Consequently, they learn to calm themselves while stress levels remain constant. So far, this work has been especially helpful for children with ADHD.

And that study about gamers who play violent games having better visual attention skills? Lead study author Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive neuroscientist, is thrilled by the idea that video-game playing can help stroke victims regain their vision much more quickly. (Often, strokes don't actually physically harm the optic nerve; they cause parts of the brain to destimulate-the same areas stimulated by violent video games.) She and her colleagues are working to replicate the result without the violence.

What About the Kids?

Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, told Beliefnet: "In general, I think we overestimate the malleability and fragility of children. We think that any or every bad event will leave some trace or scar. It doesn't. What does matter is longstanding conditions of childhood, activities that go on for hundreds of hours, that encourage or discourage certain virtues and values. When these longstanding conditions or activities match up with other parts of a child's experience, we have the major ingredients of socialization."

Haidt continued, "So I think that playing violent video games may have few or no harmful effects if the rest of the child's world is well-socialized, full of clear moral exemplars and good relationships with adult moral exemplars. That of course is a very big if. For children who are surrounded by scenes of violence and callousness in the rest of their lives, and in the TV and movies that they watch, I think that long-term participation in shooter games will probably contribute to a kind of moral coarsening or degradation.

"[The young] of all species love to play," Haidt added, "and they play to practice skills they will need as an adult. Warfare and conflict has always been an important human skill. My favorite toys when I was a kid were guns, yet I went on to run a gun-control group. I think it would only be the antisocial games that would (if played over a long period of time) lead to some degradation of the moral sense."

Dr. Paul Pearsall, author of The Beethoven Factor, takes a more spiritual approach to the question. "We are becoming really good at doing but not so good at being, at winning rather than cooperating," he told Beliefnet. "Regular tapping on a controller that zaps opponents to their death may indeed develop very fast and accurate visual skills and hand-eye coordination-but the coordination that we have found needs much more practice is not hand/eye but head/heart. It is the journey between the head and the heart that remains the longest and most difficult one, and I doubt that sitting alone killing imaginary beings and monsters is going to do much to help us negotiate that path."