Soldatova, Teslavskaya. [Videogames, academic performance and attention problems: practices and results of foreign empirical studies of children and adolescents]

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.