Digital Game Play: Any Association With Preteens' Cognitive Ability Test Performance?

• In Event: Game-Based Learning Environments

Abstract

This exploratory study establishes a digital gaming profile of preteen-age-students by examining gaming tendencies of 160 fifth-grade students. The results indicate that 11-year-olds play, on average, 13 hours/week, with boys playing significantly longer than girls. While these children played a variety of game genres as their first choice, the second most played genre was sports mostly favored by boys. Overall, digital gaming profile variables (playtime, genre, device used, and playing with others) had low, negative, and non significant correlations with cognitive tests with the exception of playtime and students’ performance of the quantitative test (significant). When the highest and lowest quartile of playtime and genre were used to compare students' performance on cognitive tests, no significant results were obtained.

Authors

• May Jadallah, Illinois State University

• Jie Zhang, University of Houston

• C. Shawn Green, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Yi Wu

• Joel Studebaker

• Shannon McCloud, Springfield Public School District

• Kristin Carlson, Illinois State University

• Elizabeth Kirby, Chicago Public Schools