A couple Iowa professors have set up a video games lab designed to study how people respond when playing video games.

The professors have acknowledged that video games are becoming an important part of our life, and their Video Game Institute for Education and Research is designed to measure responses to those playing games, such as heart rate, respiration and skin response, according to a report by KPTH Fox 44 News in South Dakota.

The Morningside College instructors, psychology professor Susan Burns and computer science professor Dean Stevens, have already collaborated on two other video game studies without their lab. The pair want to continue their research into online gaming and gaming addictions to educate consumers to give them a better understanding about video games:

"It has such a huge affect on who we are as a people and so it's important to realize what's happening with video games and how they affect us," says Stevens.

"We feel it is our role, our purpose, to not just gather the knowledge and keep it to ourselves, but to educate the public as well," says Burns.
 

Opinion: It is refreshing to see researchers taking what appears to be an objective approach to a study, with education as the goal, as opposed to scare tactics. But, we still need to see how the final results are presented in the end.

Results of a study performed by researchers at Iowa State University have led them to believe that there is a relation between “frequent” videogame playing and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

Video Games and Cognitive Control was designed to quantify the effects of playing videogames on two types of cognitive activity—proactive and reactive. Proactive attention is described as a “gearing up” mechanism, or where a player can anticipate what is coming next, versus reactive attention, which is more of a knee-jerk response (a monster jumping out).

A visual task was used to test both attention types with brain waves and responses measured in both frequent videogame players and occasional players. Both groups were charged with identifying “the color of a word when the color and word matched, such as ‘RED’ presented in red, or did not match, such as ‘RED’ presented in blue or green.” This is also referred to as the Stroop task (as seen in Brain Age).

While reactive control was similar in both groups, frequent gamers (particpants in this study who play four or more hours a day) had a propensity for exhibiting “significantly diminished” proactive attention. From a press release:

These data reveal a reduction in brain activity and disruption of behavior associated with sustained attention ability related to video game experience, which converges with other recent findings indicating that there is a relation between frequent video game playing and ADD.

While admitting that the study did have a few limitations, the researchers hoped that “our results may serve to constrain the claims of some scholars, game manufacturers, and journalists who have suggested that playing action video games ‘improves attention.’”

Director of Research for the National Institute on Media and the Family Dr. Doug Gentile, also a professor at ISU and in charge of the school's Media Research Lab, did not have his name listed in this study (other than the citation of his previous work).

The study is being published in the October 2009 issue of Psychophysiology.

Image via http://gonzoartist.blogspot.com

If you build it, they will come...

Oops - wrong Iowa attraction reference.

But in Ottumwa, Iowa yesterday some 3,500 people turned out to show support for the building of a proposed Video Game Hall of Fame. Among those is attendance were Congressman David Loebsack (D) and Lt. Gov. Patty Judge (D), according to Kotaku. Judge read a proclamation from Gov. Chet Culver (D) which deemed Ottumwa as the "Video Game Capital of the World."

Chris Hoeksema, a member of the committee exploring the idea of building the Hall of Fame, was stunned by the turnout:

It's really been amazing. We were not expecting this much outpouring of support from the community and the state. And the entire world, really. We've had donations from overseas and some people flew in from the United Kingdom to attend. It's been an amazing amount of support.

A Radio Iowa report adds that the Hall of Fame project enjoys backing from city, county and state government officials. Ottumwa Mayor Dale Uehling, among the Hall's supporters, commented on some of the nuts-and-bolts issues which must be addressed:

We're very hopeful that we can become the video gaming capitol of the world... We need to get a comprehensive study done on exactly what is needed... Part of this will depend on what is the attraction going to be? We visualize that we would have international competition here as a part of this so we need something that's going to have some capacity.