Video Games May Hinder Child Development
Dr. Geoff Potter, a UVic educational
faculty member, claims that children who play games run the risk of becoming
less creative and less literate as adults. He says games, when combined
with a lack of educational and extra-curricular stimulation, may impede
an important step in a child’s development and may disturb the imaging
process that helps children learn to read. “There are many factors
that influence learning to read, and one of them is a process called imaging,
which involves creating images in the mind from the neutral words on a page,”
says Potter, who studies the impact of television on children. The imaging
process has a lot to do with a child’s ability for creative thinking,
problem solving, social interaction, and for developing a sense of colour
and depth. “We each create different images associated with our own
life experience. What happens when a child encounters a game or a television
program, is that there is no capacity for imagination. They have no choice
but to accept someone else’s idea of what a person or action looks
like. The child’s imaging process stops, and from the point of view
of learning psychologists, this is problematic.”
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Keywords: video games, children, development