Video Games May Interfere with Children's Development: New Study

Several studies so far have hinted at video games' harmful effects on learning processes in children. Because these statistical studies were measuring performance after the fact, it was always difficult to determine whether there was an actual causal effect due to video games, or whether the measured effect was an artifact due to predispositions in video gamers.

For the first time, a small study, led by Robert Weis, of Denison University, randomly assigned children to two groups, a video playing group and a control group. This random assignment makes it possible to measure causality between video games and learning impact. The study was published on February 18 in Psychological Science.

The result: because of their contact with video games, the children in the video playing group were slower in learning academic skills, in particular reading,  writing and spelling skills.

The story in LiveScience and  AOL Health