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Journal of Modern Foreign Psychology
2017. Vol. 6, no. 4, 21–28
doi:10.17759/jmfp.2017060402
ISSN: 2304-4977 (online)

Videogames, academic performance and attention problems: practices and results of foreign empirical studies of children and adolescents

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G.U. Soldatova, O.I. Teslavskaia

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Abstract

The article is a review of empirical studies on the problem of children and adolescents’ videogaming and its effects on academic performance and attention problems (including ADHD). Despite many types of research projects, and the variety of their designs and methods, the consistent point of view on how videogaming affect school marks and cognitive developments of schoolers of different ages is missing. There is an evidence of both negative and positive effects of videogaming on academic performance and ADHD; some results also show no significant effect. Diversity of research results may be caused by basic methodological position of research teams — whether videogaming is studied as a form of addiction, or normal leisure activity; a place which videogaming holds in conglomerate of determinants of children’ well-being; specificity of methods which are used for assess of academic performance, attention problems and intensiveness of videogaming.

General Information

Keywords: videogames, computer games, children, adolescents, academic performance, attention, ADHD, cognitive development, videogaming addiction/

Journal rubric: Educational Psychology and Pedagogical Psychology

Article type: review article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/jmfp.2017060402

Funding. This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Humanities. Project № 17-06-00762.

For citation: Soldatova G.U., Teslavskaia O.I. Videogames, academic performance and attention problems: practices and results of foreign empirical studies of children and adolescents [Elektronnyi resurs]. Sovremennaia zarubezhnaia psikhologiia = Journal of Modern Foreign Psychology, 2017. Vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 21–28. DOI: 10.17759/jmfp.2017060402. (In Russ., аbstr. in Engl.)

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Information About the Authors

Galina U. Soldatova, Doctor of Psychology, Professor, Professor, Department of Personality Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Head of the Department of Social Psychology, Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis, Moscow, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6690-7882, e-mail: soldatova.galina@gmail.com

Oksana I. Teslavskaia, Research Fellow of the Center for Risk Monitoring and Social-Psychological Support, Academy of Public Administration, Postgraduate student of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, e-mail: teslavskaia@gmail.com

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