Cameron Reed

English 1001

March 13, 2018

Annotated bib #1

The Effects of Video Games on People

Source #1:

Barr, Matthew. "Student Attitudes to Games-Based Skills Development: Learning from Vide

Games in Higher Education." Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 80, Mar. 2018, pp. 283-294.

EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.chb.2017.11.030.

This article is a study that was done to see if video games improved specific skills. They

had a control group and a tested group; the tested group had selected several games from a list of

recommendations and played them over an 8-week period. Matthew Barr says video games could

enhance “communication skills, teamwork, and adaptability”. The conclusion of the test shows

results that strongly supported the hypotheses that video games did improve people’s

resourcefulness and the other previously mentioned skills.

Because of this article’s strong evidence, I know I can use it my paper to show some

guaranteed ways to improve some specific skills. The audience I am directing my paper would

also be surprised to see some real upsides to playing video games proven with tested studies.

This article is a scholarly peer reviewed article, and the author Matthew Barr studies and

teaches Computing Science at the school of humanities, University of Glasgow in the UK.
Source #2:

Eichenbaum, Adam, et al. "Video Games: Play That Can Do Serious Good." American

Journal of Play, vol. 7, no. 1, 01 Sept. 2014, pp. 50-72. EBSCOhost,

libezp.lib.lsu.edu/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-

com.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1043955&site=eds-

live&scope=site&profile=eds-main.

This paper goes over “principles psychologists, neuroscientists, and educators believe

that are critical for learning.” The article fights the thought that games are just mindless fun. It

shows games have real world purpose in teaching and is a very practical way of doing it.

The article has some more information I wanted to incorporate into my paper. I want to

show that playing video games isn’t bad and that you could actually learn from them and show

some ways that someone could improve from playing video games.

This is a scholarly peer reviewed article and its source was American Journal of play.

The main author is a co-write in many other papers and has countless lead roles in other journals.

And is also a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Source #3:

Granic, Isabela, et al. "The Benefits of Playing Video Games." American

Psychologist, vol. 69, no. 1, n.d., pp. 66-78. EBSCOhost,

libezp.lib.lsu.edu/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-
com.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edswss&AN=000331802400004&site=eds-

live&scope=site&profile=eds-main.

This article focuses on the benefits of playing video games. It states, “children use play

for emotional mastery in their real lives.” Gottman pg 1 it talks about how children grow and

adapt to the real world through social games. The article continues by saying “Contrary to

conventional beliefs that playing video games is intellectually lazy and sedating, it turns out that

playing these games promotes a wide range of cognitive skills.”-Granic pg 1

This article was exactly what I was hoping to find. It goes over all the benefits in playing

video games known at that time in research. I could use it for some strong points in my paper.

The article is a big breakthrough in research for me.

This Journal was peer reviewed and published by AMER Psychological Association. The

main author Isabela Granic is a co-writer to many other scholarly peer reviewed journals and

articles. And she also has her PhD from the University of Toronto in Developmental psychology.

Source #4

Hines, Terence. "Virtual Violence: A Review of Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent

Video Games Is Wrong. By Patrick M. Markey and Christopher J. Ferguson." Skeptic (Altadena,

CA), no. 4, 2017, p. 62. EBSCOhost, libezp.lib.lsu.edu/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-

com.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgbc&AN=edsgcl.520714011&site=eds-

live&scope=site&profile=eds-main.

This journal is a review of a book called “Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video

Games is Wrong” (Patrick M. and Christopher J). the review gives a history of video games and

how people try to pin violence in young kids on the games they play. It disproves that notion and
shows that video games are not bad but that they are good, even the violent fps (first person

shooter) games.

I really like the book that’s being reviewed and think it has some really good information

I could use in my paper. When it goes over the facts of how games don’t cause people to be more

violent is where I would focus my attention.

The author Terence Hines has written and taken part in many scholarly papers. Including

this review. He is also a professor of neurology at Pace University.

Source #5

Parong, Jocelyn, et al. "Empirical Study: Learning Executive Function Skills by Playing

Focused Video Games." Contemporary Educational Psychology, vol. 51, 01 Oct. 2017, pp. 141-

151. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2017.07.002.

This article was a study done to see if specific video game could teach “cognitive

shifting”. Jocelyn and the others conducting the study had two groups, one playing a game that

you need to shift with the other not needing to shift. The data they provided shows strong

evidence that after playing 2 hours for four sessions peoples shifting skills improved much

higher than the others in the test.

Due to the specific nature of this article, I won’t be able to use it as much as I would like

but it still has some really good data in a graph I would like to use in my paper.

The author Joclyn Parong is a professor at the university of California, Santa Barbara and

is the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

Source #6

Simone, Kühn, et al. "The Myth of Blunted Gamers: No Evidence for Desensitization in

Empathy for Pain After a Violent Video Game Intervention in a Longitudinal Fmri Study on

Non-Gamers." Neurosignals, Vol 26, Iss 1, Pp 22-30 (2018), no. 1, 2018, p. 22. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1159/000487217.

This article main focus is to see whether or not violent games cause people to be de-

sensitized to pain or make them more aggressive. Simone Kuhn and his team conducted an

experiment between three groups of people. One group playing violent games another not

playing games and another playing the Sims 3. They conclude that there is no correlation

between violent games and people’s outward emotion in the real world.

I could use this as evidence that games don’t make people more violent or cause people

to become violent. This shows that you can’t make the assumption that it was the games they

played that made them that way when 99% of boys and 94% of all girls play video games. I plan

to use this as infuses on my point that video games don’t make people more aggressive or hostile

in the real world.

The author of this paper, Simone Kuhn, is a senior scientist at the Center of Lifespan

Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. And has helped co-write other

scholarly peer reviewed articles.