Videogame exposure positively associates with selective attention in a cross-sectional sample of young children

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257877
• Publication Date: 2021-09-27T19:41:32Z
• Authors: Alexandria D. Samson; Christiane S. Rohr; Suhyeon Park; Anish Arora; Amanda Ip; Ryann Tansey; Tiana Comessotti; Sheri Madigan; Deborah Dewey; Signe Bray
• Keywords: Male; Psychological Tests; Time Factors; Science; Q; 05 social sciences; R; Executive Function; 03 medical and health sciences; Child Development; 0302 clinical medicine; Video Games; Child, Preschool; Visual Perception; Medicine; Humans; Attention; Female; 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences; Child; Research Article

There is growing interest in how exposure to videogames is associated with young children’s development. While videogames may displace time from developmentally important activities and have been related to lower reading skills, work in older children and adolescents has suggested that experience with attention-demanding/fast-reaction games positively associates with attention and visuomotor skills. In the current study, we assessed 154 children aged 4–7 years (77 male; mean age 5.38) whose parents reported average daily weekday recreational videogame time, including information about which videogames were played. We investigated associations between videogame exposure and children’s sustained, selective, and executive attention skills. We found that videogame time was significantly positively associated only with selective attention. Longitudinal studies are needed to elucidate the directional association between time spent playing recreational videogames and attention skills.