Relations between videogame play and 8th-graders' mathematics achievement

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Research on videogames has examined relationships between the amount of time children spend playing videogames and academic outcomes. This study explored whether associations existed between the type of video game being played and math performance. Relationships between gender and math scores were also examined. There was no main effect of time spent playing video games, the spatial content of games, or the complexity of games on math performance. However, on some math scales spatial content interacted with time spent playing, such that there were higher levels of math performance when participants played games high in spatial content at low amounts of time. A similar interaction was found for complexity content and time spent playing. A significant interaction was present among gender, spatial content, and time spent playing for one math subscale. The study provides evidence that it may be important to consider the spatial or complexity content of videogames when addressing the relationship between videogame play and adolescent math performance.