The Effect of Video Game Playing on High School Students' Grades

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

History of Video Games1

Play and Play Therapy2

Video Game Types and Genres4

Video games and its impact7

Prevalence of Video Games in high school students13

Psychosocial Negative effects associated with use of game13

Background of the research16

Effects of amount of video game play on school performance17

Importance to Learning17

Social Change18

Video Games or Internet18

Video Game Addiction Definition and Causes19

Background of the Problem19

Statement of the Problem20

Purpose of the Study21

Theoretical Framework21

Assumptions, Limitations, Scope, and Delimitations22

Assumptions22

Limitations23

Scope23

Delimitations23

Definition of Terms24

Layout of the Dissertation24

Summary24

REFERENCES26

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

History of Video Games

The first video game was created Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1948 by William A. Higginbotham, an engineer who had previously worked on developing advanced radar systems for the Manhattan Project, wanted to create an entertaining exhibition for members of the public who were visiting Brookhaven (Aldrich 2009). He created a simple tennis simulation which he called Tennis for two using a small point of light displayed on a 5” monochrome oscilloscope screen. This artificial “ball” could be controlled using two control boxes, each comprised of a knob to control the ball, and a “serve” button (ASLINGER, 2010). Players could use these control boxes - the first likely use of a “joystick” - to play against each other. In the fall of 1961, the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) delivered their newest model computer, a PDP-1 to the electrical engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The video game industry crash of 1982 seemed to paint a bleak picture of the industry's future. In 1982, over ii consoles were available for consumers to purchase and every game was manufactured to be playable on only one particular console (Seung, 2011). In contrast, current video games, such as Madden08, are manufactured in several media forms so that anyone with a modern console can play it. In 1986, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), which has since led to a steady increase in video game playing as a form of recreation.

Just a few years following the release of the NES, pilot studies into the effects of video games on its players began to surface. Some, including an article published by James E. Gardner, proposed that video games could be useful in psychotherapy (NNIE, 2011). The lack of affordable technological advancement is what prevented an earlier inventing of a video game console and its games and indirectly led to a 25-year gap between Axline's works on play therapy arid the invention of the first video game console for the home. The uncertainty of an industry coupled with an apparent perception of video game players as a niche market indirectly led to a 20-year gap between the first video game console for the home and the first published journal article on the potential benefits of playing video games. Even today, a search conducted on a journal database brings up fewer than ten published articles relating to the potential benefit that exists in using video games as a form of play therapy in the therapy ...