CAES1000 Task 3 Report (Semester 2, 2023-2024)

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CAES1000 Core University English

Writing Task 3 Report - Topic and Question

Task 3: Writing a Well-structured and Well-argued

Semester 2, 2023-2024

Report (Assessed - Writing 35%; Annotations 5%)

Assessment Criteria:

You will be assessed on the quality of your essay which is worth 35% of your final grade. The assessment criteria are on the Central Course Moodle.

You will also be assessed on the quality of your annotations. You must tell us in your annotations WHAT academic writing skills you have applied and WHY you have applied them. The skills may include the use of citation and referencing, cohesive devices, corpus for vocabulary, Generative AI etc. This will be worth 5% of your final grade. The assessment criteria for this are as follows:

Standard	Expectations of student performance
Satisfactory (5%)	The majority of your annotations show a good understanding of the academic  writing  skills being practised in the course. You have provided clear and enough details for each annotation.
Unsatisfactory (1.5%)	You will be  given  an  unsatisfactory  grade  if one  or  more  of the following is true: Only a few or none of your annotations show a good understanding of the academic writing skills being practised in the course. You have made fewer than 8 annotations. Each of your annotations is not related to separate aspects of academic writing. Most of your annotations are unclear and without enough details. You have copied your annotations from another student.
Non-submission (0%)	You did not annotate your Task 3 Report.

Topic: The Impacts of Video Games on Young People

WRITE A REPORT

TASK DESCRIPTION

Research into the impact on young people of playing video games has found a range of effects. Discuss the benefits and drawbacks for young people of playing video games, and make recommendations for how the drawbacks can be minimised.

In your response, you may wish to demonstrate your critical judgment through evaluating the effectiveness of your recommendations in certain specific contexts or settings.

Text 1: authored by Paul J. C. Adachi, Teena Willoughby / from an article titled The link between playing video games and positive youth outcomes / from a journal titled Child Development Perspectives / Volume 11 / Issue 3 / 2021 / pp. 91-94 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-02

Introduction

Video games continue to be popular, with 97% of U.S. boys and girls playing these games (Root, 2018), with boys playing them daily (Bairstow, 2016). Research on video game use has focused primarily on negative outcomes (aggression, addiction) at the expense of positive outcomes (Ali & Woakes, 2017). In this article, we rather highlight how a focus on a theory of human motivation, self-determination theory (SDT), can offer a conceptual framework for why playing video games might lead to positive outcomes in different domains.

Competence, Autonomy, Relatedness

Contexts that support the three basic psychological needs of competence (sense of efficacy), autonomy (personal agency), and relatedness (social connectedness) facilitate positive outcomes, such as enhancing intrinsic motivation, optimal functioning, learning, well-being, and healthy relationships. Several studies (see Crawley, 2018; Woakes, 2020) suggest that playing video games can satisfy psychological needs, which, in turn, can enhance intrinsic motivation and well-being. SDT may provide a framework for understanding the effects of playing video games in improving problem-solving skills and intergroup relations.

Self-exploration

Other researchers have used SDT to examine how playing video games relates to young adults’ self-exploration (Stokes, 2019). During video game play, individuals can try on different ideal selves (selves that have characteristics they would like to have), thereby potentially satisfying psychological needs, e.g., competence (Bairstow & Root, 2018). In a study by Brook (2018), players experienced more intrinsic motivation and well-being if the game fostered congruence between their ideal self and their game self (i.e., the characteristics they experienced when playing the video game).

The Link Between Playing Video Games and Problem-Solving Skills

Researchers have also focused on how such play promotes cognitive skills. For example, playing video games has been associated with enhanced visual–spatial abilities, executive control, and attentional control (Duckett, 2020). Some video games may enhance problem-solving by encouraging players to stop, examine their situation, and consider different strategies before continuing rather than moving forward as fast as possible (Crawley, 2017).

In addition, video games often feature problem-solving tasks as players proceed through the game. This continual exposure to challenges might lead players to develop greater persistence over time. In a study of young adults (Wong, 2019), frequent video game players spent more time than infrequent players trying to solve anagrams and riddles in a task involving a nonvideo game. Only certain types of video games (strategy and role-playing games) may promote problem-solving skills because they typically encourage players to gather information, weigh options, and formulate a strategy before acting (Wood, 2018).

Rashid (2016) showed that adolescents who played strategic and role-playing video games more frequently reported greater problem-solving skills over time than those who played these games less frequently. In addition, playing strategic video games indirectly predicted academic grades through problem-solving skills. Specifically, playing strategic video games predicted greater self-reported problem-solving skills over time and these, in turn, predicted higher academic grades over time (Crawley & Duckett, 2019).

The Link Between Video Game Play and Intergroup Relations

Today, millions of young people play online video games cooperatively with people from different social groups across the internet, working together to achieve a common goal. Online video games might afford a unique opportunity for intergroup cooperation. We tested this hypothesis in an experiment with young Canadian adults (Adachi & Willoughby, 2019). Participants played a violent first-person shooter game online cooperatively with an outgroup member (a person from a university in the United States) versus an ingroup member (a person from the same university as the participant), working together to shoot and kill attacking zombie-like enemies. Intergroup cooperation boosted favorable attitudes toward the target outgroup from before the game to after the game.

Text 2: authored by Wanda M. Williams, Cynthia G. Ayres, Brian Mulder / from a journal article titled Can active video games improve physical activity in adolescents? / from a journal titled International Journal of Public Health / Volume 17 / Issue 2 / 2020 / pp. 3–6 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093

Introduction

Being physically inactive is one of the leading risk factors for many chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases (Black & Symonds, 2012). The impact of physical inactivity can be seen in shorter life expectancy, poorer health outcomes, and decreased quality of life (Williams & Xu, 2016). Yet, children of all ages are failing to meet the required level of physical activity: unfortunately, self-reported data of high school students in the United States indicate that the prevalence of adolescents meeting the recommendation of less than 60 minutes of physical activity on all seven days of the week was 27.1% in the US (Pilkington & Wong, 2018).

Therefore, effective and sustainable interventions are needed, especially for adolescents. Maintaining adequate physical activity habits could significantly translate into better health habits in adulthood (Williams & Wong, 2016). One solution to increasing physical activity in adolescents may involve the use of active video games. Active video games (AVGs), also called “exergames,” are a category of video games that require movement or physical exertion to play the game.

The value of exergames

Exergames or AVGs appear to be a safe, fun, and valuable means of promoting physical activity in adolescents. The use of exergaming or AVGs could be an innovative alternative for increasing physical activity levels among adolescents. Studies show that playing AVGs over short periods of time are similar in intensity to light-to-moderate traditional physical activities such as walking, skipping, and jogging (Jansson, 2017). It has been established that physical activity declines in adolescents, especially among girls (Lau & Pilkington, 2019). Therefore, effective measures are needed to reduce this trend. The findings in these studies not only showed indications for improved physical activity levels but also improved the overall physical health of adolescents.

Although Pope et al. (2018) did not report an improvement or increase in physical activity levels among high school students, they did provide information on how to best structure a gaming intervention for high school students. Adolescents enjoy spending time with their friends and being interactive. Therefore, lessons learned from this study indicated that separating students from their friends through randomization may not be beneficial. Studies conducted among adolescents indicate that peer support is important for engaging in and maintaining physical activity levels (Lau, 2015; Morgan & Root, 2014). AVGs can serve two purposes: promoting physical activity engagement and fostering friendship and social cohesion with their peers, which is an important factor of adolescent socialization.

Video games leading to physical activity in real life

In a study by Pope and Woakes (2017) of traditional video game play, playing sports video games was linked to vigorous physical activity, suggesting that participants who played these games more frequently may be more intrinsically interested in being physically active than those who played them less frequently.

Further, Adachi et al. (2019) investigated the long-term association for young adults between playing sports video games and playing real-life sports. Young people who reported higher frequency of playing sports video games were more likely to play traditional sports over time than those who reported lower frequency of playing sports video games. Playing sports video games also indirectly predicted their involvement in traditional sports through self-esteem. We suggest that when playing sports video games, players may experience the thrill of victory, gain knowledge or strategies related to sports, and have fun, which, in turn, may enhance in self-esteem. Furthermore, young people who play sports video games and have higher self-esteem may feel more optimistic and confident about approaching new challenges (Duckett, 2019), and thus may be more likely to get involved in traditional sports.

Conclusions

AVGs can be adopted in multiple such as homes, schools, churches, or community centers. These findings suggest that AVGs may be an effective means to increase adolescents’ physical activity levels. Studies have also shown that AVGs have the potential to increase movement and energy expenditure in adolescents (Farley & Wong, 2019). We are in a growing age of technology, and the next generation of computer games could play a major role in promoting and encouraging the engagement of physical activity among adolescents.

Text 3: authored by Craig A. Anderson, Wayne Warburton / from a book chapter titled The impact of violent video games / from a book titled Growing Up Fast and Furious: The Impacts of Violent Media on Children / 2021 / Edited by D. Braunstein / The Federation Press / pp.148-168.

Introduction

A 2018 poll showed that American children aged 8-18 played an average of eight hours of video games per week (Roberts, 2018). Playing is heaviest in the 11-14 age group. Lenhart (2020) has found that around 99 per cent of American boys play video games, along with 94 per cent of girls. It is common for US children and adolescents to play more than 20 hours per week, with some males playing 40 hours or more per week (Bailey & West, 2020). Children and adolescents are exposed regularly to video games with high levels of violence and anti-social themes. This makes it important for parents, educators and professionals who work with children to have some knowledge of their effects.

Harmful effects of video games

Video game addiction

Video game addiction is now taken so seriously by psychologists that it was recently considered for inclusion in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) as a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. It has been found that 8.5 per cent of 8-18-year-old US video gamers do so at “pathological” levels (Gentile, 2019). Similar studies have found figures of 11.9 per cent in Europe (Grusser, 2007), 8.7 per cent in Singapore (Choo et al., 2020), 10.3 per cent in China (Peng & Li, 2019) and 4 per cent for 12-18-year-olds in Norway (Johansson, 2014), with a further 15.5 per cent “at risk”.

Attention deficit

Some studies link the amount of time children spend playing video games to attention deficits, impulsivity and hyperactivity (Bailey et al., 2020). Gentile (2019) found that adolescents who used video games at pathological levels were nearly three times more likely to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder than adolescents who played at non-pathological levels.

School performance

Spending longer hours playing video games is linked with poorer school performance for both children and adolescents (Chiu & Sharif, 2016). One explanation for this is a simple displacement of time: hours spent playing video games eats into time that would normally be spent studying and reading. In a study of 1491 young people between 10 and 19, gamers spent 30 per cent less time reading and 34 per cent less time doing homework (Cummings, 2017). Another possibility is that excessive gaming creates attention deficits, which in turn can lead to poorer school performance.

Anderson et al. (2020) found that the violent video game effects occurred for both males and females, and across Eastern countries (Japan) and Western countries (Australia and the United States). Other reviews have found that violent video games affect people regardless of age, gender, socio-economic status, game genre or system (Barlett, 2019). No group has been identified as immune to the effects of violent media (Chan, 2020).

The psychology of violent video game effects on children

Imitation and identification

Humans seem to be hard-wired from birth to imitate others. Recently discovered “mirror neurons” in humans and primates represent one mechanism in the brain that may facilitate this (Caggiano, 2019). Imitation has benefits, including for fast learning and human bonding. But imitation of anti-social behaviours has negative effects for the individual and society.

We know that children imitate characters from the media they see, especially those that are attractive, popular, heroic, high-status or rewarded for their behaviour. In violent video games the central characters often meet several of these criteria. Gamers often copy the behaviours of characters in violent games such as Grand Theft Auto. In 2003 William Buckner, 16, and his step-brother Joshua, 14, killed a man and seriously wounded a woman shooting at cars in Tennessee (Calvert, 2008). The boys claimed they were acting out the game GTA III. Also in 2003, Devin Moore, an 18-year-old from Alabama, killed three police officers. On being arrested he told police: “Life is like a video game. Everybody’s got to die sometime” (Leung, 2005, p.65). He told police he was copying behaviour he had learned playing GTA III.

Repetition

Repetition of behaviours establishes them in memory, increases skill and automates them as learned responses (see Gentile & Gentile, 2018). Violent video games are more repetitive than other forms of violent media and more often involve the repetition of complete behavioural sequences (Gentile, 2017). Players repeat the same behaviours and receive similar rewards throughout the game, experience similar thoughts and feelings during those actions and are exposed to the attitudes espoused in the game implicitly and explicitly. The repetitive nature of violent video games is ideal for learning aggressive attitudes and scripts.

Associative learning

The brain is a neural network in which concepts, ideas, feelings and memories are stored and interconnected. In media generally, and in violent video games especially, many things are frequently paired and thus become “wired” together. For example, guns are rarely used for any purpose other than violent action. This suggests that children who often play games featuring the hurting of others are more likely to be aggressive immediately after playing the game. Associative learning also explains why sequences of behaviour are learned during video game play and why acquiring aggression-related knowledge is so important.

Fictitious violence versus real violence

Brain imaging studies have shown that even when children know the violence they are watching is fantasy, their brains respond to the violence as if there was a real threat (Murray, 2016). Long-term memory systems were also activated, suggesting that this effect could endure beyond the initial exposure. This suggests that fantasy media violence seems to have a similar impact on children as exposure to real media violence. Over the long term, exposure to the attitudes and scripts for behaviour in violent video games leads to tendencies that include aggressive behaviour in real life.

Advice for parents and professionals working with children

The above research raises the question of how to help children to benefit from video games but escape their negative impacts. They could be told that, as with food, there are media that are good to consume regularly (in moderation), media that are for infrequent consumption and media that they should avoid. Helping a child to self-regulate media consumption can be very important to a child’s development. This may involve:

• educating children about media and video game effects, to make informed choices;

• helping children to limit their time playing video games;

• encouraging pro-social and educational video games in preference to violent games;

• keeping video game consoles in public areas and out of children’s bedrooms; and

• playing video games with children so parents are aware of their content and can discuss the implications of playing certain games and screen out potentially harmful ones.

Text 4: authored by Christopher L. Groves / from a book chapter titled Negative effects of video game play / from a book titled Handbook of Digital Games and Entertainment / / Edited by Ryohei Nakatsu / 2020 / Springer / pp. 86-98

Knowledge Structures and Priming Effects

Cognitive neoassociation theory (Berkowitz, 1993) states that aggression results from the experience of aversive events. These events directly produce negative emotion which activate fight-or-flight tendencies. Thoughts, emotional and behavioral tendencies are all activated when presented with a cue. When viewing images of violence, aggression-related concepts are activated in memory, and the mind is primed to operate using these knowledge structures.

In one study, Bluemke (2010) randomly assigned participants to play either a violent game in which participants shot at other characters in the game or played a nonviolent game in which all aspects of the game were identical except that participants were asked to water flowers (i.e., prosocial behavior). Participants then completed an aggression-related test. Those who had just played a violent game produced faster response times to aggression-related words. In essence, violent game play induced a shift toward more aggressive self-concept, and this shift can be seen as causal.

There is also strong evidence that associations between concepts have potent implications for aggressive behavior in the long term (Lau & Wong, 2020). One way that strong, long-lasting links between such concepts develop is with practice. Just as one way to memorize a telephone number or multiplication tables is to rehearse them, so too various concepts become more strongly linked in long-term memory with frequent rehearsal. As individuals engage in violent game play over extended periods of time (e.g., months, years), aggression-related knowledge structures are developed, creating a strong network of aggression-related concepts that are more readily activated to drive behavior.

Script and Social Learning Theory

Script theory posits that individuals possess knowledge structures that are responsible for guiding behavior based on a given situational context (Huesmann, 2006). When individuals play violent video games, they repeatedly view aggressive behavior in a rewarding context. Heroes who slay enemies are rewarded with social praise by other characters in the game; they receive monetary rewards, new weapons and armor, and the like. Further, the consequences of aggressive behavior are frequently not present at all in violent games. In reality, aggressive and violent actions lead to pain, death, fear, collateral damage, and social consequences. But there are no grieving family members on the streets of the Grand Theft Auto franchise following a player’s rampage.

Desensitization to Violence

Another route through which violent video game play increases aggression is by desensitizing individuals to violence. This is a reduced emotional and physiological response to viewing violence in real life. In one major study, Carnagey et al. (2007) randomly assigned participants to play a violent or nonviolent game for 20 minutes. They then asked all participants to view a 10-min-long videotape of real-life violence while measuring their heart rate. They found that individuals who had played the violent game displayed less physiological arousal than their nonviolent game-playing counterparts.

This reduced response predicted increases in aggressive behavior. When we are faced with the decision to aggress, an important factor we consider is how aversive the act of aggression appears to us. For individuals who find the notion of acting aggressively to be unpleasant, nonaggressive alternatives are more likely to be selected (Engelhardt, 2011).

Prosocial Behavior

Violent game play has been found to reduce prosocial behaviors (Greitemeyer, 2014). In two studies on this, researchers examined the influence of violent media use on helping behavior. In the first study (Bush, 2009), participants were randomly assigned to play a violent or a nonviolent game. After playing, they were asked to complete a questionnaire. While filling out this questionnaire, a staged fight occurred outside of the laboratory. Individuals who had played the violent game were less likely to rate the fight as serious and were less likely to “hear” the fight in the first place, relative to those who had played a nonviolent game. In the second study (Lau et al., 2015), they asked a woman to stand outside of a movie theater and struggle in picking up her crutches. Of primary interest was whether the length of time it took for movie goers to help would vary as a function of the type of movie they watched. As the researchers predicted, they found that it took longer for individuals to help if they had just watched a violent movie compared to a nonviolent movie.

Risk Taking

Participants randomly assigned to play a racing video game were more likely to view themselves as risky drivers and therefore displayed more risk-taking tendencies. In a study by Beullens et al. (2011), adolescents were studied over a period of two years, in which respondents who played racing video games were more likely to report increased risk-taking behavior including speeding and “fun riding” (taking risks while driving). These effects also appeared to be mediated by changes in players’ attitudes and intentions regarding these behaviors.

However, the study showed that the impact of game play on risk-taking behaviors appeared to vary as a function of the specific games played. Participants reported on which game they had played out of Spider-Man 2, Manhunt, and Grand Theft Auto III. The authors wanted to understand whether characteristics of the protagonist would impact on risk-taking behaviors. They found that the game with a protagonist who engages in risk-taking behaviors with the intent of helping others (Spider-Man 2) was only weakly related to the players’ real-world risk-taking behaviors, compared with games with protagonists with more deviant motives (Manhunt, GTA III). As players engage in these roles over time, the self-concept is repeatedly paired with character-related concepts which then drive behavior.

Stereotyped Depictions

Work has focused on depictions of characters as racially stereotyped. Saleem and Anderson (2013) conducted research indicating that individuals playing a video game that depicted Arab characters as terrorists observed increased anti-Arab attitudes and perceptions of Arabs as aggressive compared to participants who played other games without such depictions, although they also observed increased anti-Arab attitudes among participants who played a game with Russian terrorists. This finding suggests that there exists a strong preexisting association between Arabs and terrorism, perhaps partially resulting from televised coverage of Arabs in a stereotyped or unbalanced manner.