A video game can change the brain, may improve empathy in middle schoolers
A space-exploring robot crashes on a distant planet. In order to gather the
pieces of its damaged spaceship, it needs to build emotional rapport with the
local alien inhabitants. The aliens speak a different language but their facial
expressions are remarkably humanlike.
This fantastical scenario is the premise of a video game developed for
middle schoolers by University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers to study
whether video games can boost kids’ empathy, and to understand how learning
such skills can change neural connections in the brain.
Results published in npj Science of
Learning (a Nature journal) reveal for the first time
that, in as few as two weeks, kids who played a video game designed to train
empathy showed greater connectivity in brain networks related to empathy and
perspective taking. Some also showed altered neural networks commonly linked to
emotion regulation, a crucial skill that this age group is beginning to develop,
the study authors say.
“The realization that these skills are actually trainable with video games
is important because they are predictors of emotional well-being and health
throughout life, and can be practiced anytime — with or without video games,”
says Tammi Kral, a UW–Madison graduate student in psychology who led the
research at the Center for Healthy Minds.
Richard Davidson, director of the center and a professor of psychology and
psychiatry at UW–Madison, explains that empathy is the first step in a sequence
that can lead to prosocial behavior, such as helping others in need.
“If we can’t empathize with another’s difficulty or problem, the motivation
for helping will not arise,” says Davidson, who headed the research team. “Our
long-term aspiration for this work is that video games may be harnessed for
good and if the gaming industry and consumers took this message to heart, they
could potentially create video games that change the brain in ways that support
virtuous qualities rather than destructive qualities.”
On average, youth between the ages of 8 and 18 rack up more than 70 minutes
of video gameplay daily, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
This spike in gameplay during adolescence coincides with an explosion in brain
growth as well as a time when kids are susceptible to first encounters with
depression, anxiety and bullying. The team wanted to learn whether there were
ways to use video games as a vehicle for positive emotional development during
this critical period.
Researchers randomly assigned 150 middle schoolers to two groups. One
played the experimental game, called “Crystals of Kaydor,” which was created
for research purposes and intended to teach empathy. The second group played a
commercially available and entertaining control game called “Bastion” that does
not target empathy.
In Crystals of Kaydor, kids interacted with the aliens on the distant
planet and learned to identify the intensity of emotions they witnessed on
their humanlike faces, such as anger, fear, happiness, surprise, disgust and
sadness. The researchers measured how accurate the players were in identifying
the emotions of the characters in the game. The activity was also intended to
help the kids practice and learn empathy.
Those who played Bastion partook in a storyline where they collected
materials needed to build a machine to save their village, but tasks were not
designed to teach or measure empathy. Researchers used the game because of its
immersive graphics and third-person perspective.
The team obtained functional magnetic resonance imaging scans in the
laboratory from both groups before and after two weeks of gameplay, looking at
connections among areas of the brain, including those associated with empathy
and emotion regulation. Participants in the study also completed tests during
the brain scans that measured how accurately they empathized with others.
The researchers found stronger connectivity in empathy-related brain
networks after the middle schoolers played Crystals of Kaydor compared to Bastion.
Moreover, Crystals players who showed strengthened neural connectivity in key
brain networks for emotion regulation also improved their score on the empathy
test. Kids who did not show increased neural connectivity in the brain did not
improve on the test of empathic accuracy.
“The fact that not all children showed changes in the brain and
corresponding improvements in empathic accuracy underscores the well-known
adage that one size does not fit all,” says Davidson. “One of the key
challenges for future research is to determine which children benefit most from
this type of training and why.”
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