Many people love to play video games, but for some people, it can become an addiction. This raises the question; how can we tell if someone’s at-risk for their video game consumption to become a problem? A study published in Frontiers in Psychology suggests that psychological performance, including poor emotional regulation and response inhibition, may indicate risk level for gaming disorder.
Video games are a very popular pastime across the world, but as with many things, overuse can lead to serious negative outcomes. Internet gaming disorder was added to the last DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and involves uncontrollable gaming that interferes with an individual’s abilities to engage in social life, work, studying, and/or other daily functioning. This study seeks to understand differences in psychological performance between people who are at high or low risk for internet gaming disorder.
For their study, Shuai Wang and colleagues utilized 57 high-risk and 52 low-risk of gaming disorder individuals to serve as the sample. Participants were not used in the study if they were left-handed, had severe substance use, or suffered from a serious physical or mental illness. The sample was predominantly male. Participants answered measures on demographics, impulsiveness, emotional intelligence, and response inhibition through eye-tracking.
Results showed that individuals who showed high risk for internet gaming disorder displayed lower emotional regulation, lower scores on an eye-tracking task used to measure response inhibition and executive control, and higher impulsiveness. Participants who were at high risk for internet gaming disorder also showed significantly more game use than their low-risk counterparts.
This is especially relevant because the DSM requires an aspect of tolerance or increasing need for gaming time, which was demonstrated in this sample. People participating in more than 19 hours a week gaming online were at high-risk for these lowered psychological performances.
This study took important steps into understanding the differences between people at high risk and people at low risk for internet gaming disorder. Despite this, there are some limitations to note. One such limitation is that the risk for internet gaming disorder was measured by a scale administered one time, which could cause bias and not give the whole picture of gaming use. Additionally, the sample was relatively small and skewed male; future research could expand the participant pool.
The study, “Abnormal psychological performance as potential marker for high risk of internet gaming disorder: An eye-tracking study and support vector machine analysis“, was authored by Shuai Wang, Jialing Li1 Siyu Wang, Wei Wang, Can Mi, Wenjing Xiong, Zhengjia Xu, Longxing Tang, and Yanzhang Li.