Short essay #2

Danielle Berube                                                                                            ENGL 213

Children and Video Games: Addiction, Engagement,

and Scholastic Achievement

    Video games are very popular in the 21^st century, children all over the world play with different games, ranging from console games like XBOX, Play Station etc… to online games like World of Warcraft. Supposedly, the academic performances of many youngsters have been going downhill since the introduction to video games; parents and educators are afraid that the excessive amount of time that children spend on video games may lead to school failures or cause them to develop an addiction.  In the recent article "Children and Video games: Addiction, Engagement, and Scholastic achievement", Dr. Marko M. Skoric, who holds a Ph.D. in communication and a B.Sc. in psychology, his associates, Linda Lay Ching teo, the brand manager, and Rachel Lijie Neo, who has a Bachelor of Arts, studied "the relationship between video gaming habits and elementary school students academic performance"(Skoric,Teo,Neo, 2009). Even though video games are very popular amongst pupils, it has not yet been proven that these games affect negatively the high engagement users the same way it affects "the children with greater addictive tendencies."

    The study was done on three hundred thirty-three children in Singapore, an Asian society where school is very important, two elementary public schools participated; the samples include fifty-seven per cent of boys and forty-six per cent of girls, ages from eight to twelve. Many studies have been done regarding addictive tendencies and academic performances, "however, the relationship between engagement tendencies and academic performances remains relatively unexplored"(Skoric,Teo,Neo, 2009). The researchers suggest three different measures to support the study, they also added two main questions; Q1 "will the amount of time spent playing video games be associated with scholastic achievement", Q2 "what is the relationship between engagement and scholastic achievement". The hypothesis, H1"addictive tendencies will have a negative association with scholastic achievement", they will either confirm the measures or not.

    To commence, the participants were asked the amount of time they spent playing video games. The questions were on a 4-point scale ranging from "a little time to a lot of time spent playing video games ". They were then asked to complete a series of 11 statements about video and computer games by answering question related to an "assessment of addiction tendencies"(Skoric,Teo,Neo, 2009). The same thing applied for the "assessment of engagement tendencies". They had to respond using a 6-point scale aligned from "1, strongly disagree, to 6, strongly agree". For the last assessment, the researches obtained the participants school grades in English, mathematics and science.

   Concerning Q1, the amount of time spent playing video games during weekdays does have a positive effect on their English test scores, "the more time they spend, the more likely an elementary school child is to fare better in English". No change in the mathematics and science scores. For Q2, there was no association between engagement and academic achievements, and for H1, it was completely founded.

The information presented by Marko Skoric, Linda Lay Ching Teo and Rachel Lijie Nao is well written but not very accurate. I realized that they neglected valuable measures that are very relevant for this type of informative article. For starters, in the introduction they write about a survey called “Annenberg Public Policy Survey of children’s media consumption habits" and with the study they were able to find out how many children have video gaming equipment at home. They found out that only seventy-five per cent of children have video or computer games, meaning that there are twenty-six per cent of pupils who do not own console games. They should have started the study by verifying the percentage of children who own video or computer games and then only use the percentage that own console games. It is uncertain that the three hundred and thirty-three children are eligible for the survey. The study is not accurate because they did not verify the number of children that own video or computer games in the two elementary schools in Singapore.

    I also find that the article was not fair because they often use references from other researches that have done studies to prove that video and computer games are dangerous for pupil’s academic performances, and then Skoric, Teo and Neo state near the end that " there was a significant positive association between the amount of time spent playing video games and English test scores, which runs counter to the findings of previous studies".  They go on to say that “video gaming addiction showed a consistent negative association with academic performance". They are constantly contradicting themselves and for that I find this article to be misleading.

In conclusion, the researchers succeeded in explaining the main point of the article but there were a lot of limitations to the study, and they did not manage to convince me because their information was not completely accurate and needed more measures for it to be reliable.

Reference

 Skoric, M., Teo, L., & Neo, R. (2009). Children and Video Games: Addiction, Engagement and Scholastic Achievement. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 12(5), 567-572.

Short Essay 1

Danielle Bérubé                                                ENG 213     

Short essay #1

Opinions and Social Pressure

    Social Psychologist Solomon E. Asch wrote an article called "Opinions and

Social Pressure," his goal was to discover the influence a group has on an

Individual with a "series of simple but ingenious experiments on the influence of

group pressure upon the individual." Group pressure is common in our society, it

is important that scientists research the process of opinions and the fuction of

social circumstances.

    Solomon Asch and his associates wanted to find out how group pressure

affects individuals by experimenting with a group of seven to nine college men.

They compare the length of a single line to three other lines and match it to the

single line. Everyone gives their answers in the order of where they are seated.

On the first two trials everyone has a common answer but on the third trial, one

person disagrees with the rest of the group. He continues to give his answers

and they continue to be different from the rest of the group, " he may pause

before announcing his answer and speak in a low voice, or he may smile in an

embarrassed way" affirms Asch. The reason why there is only one person that

disagrees with the rest of the group is because he is the main subject, the others

were told to give the wrong answers to see how the subject would react in

minority, he will either stick to his opinion or succumb to the pressure of the

group.

    Asch modified his experiment by changing the amout of people in the group,

when there was only two people in the group, the subject stated the right answer

without any doubt. By adding a third person, the subject agreed 13.6 per cent of

the time with the false answer, and by adding a fourth person, his wrong answers

went up to 31.8 per cent. Also, by adding a "truthfull partner", there was now less

presure on the subject, he answered falsely "one forth as often as under

pressure of a unanimous majority. "  Asch decided  to see what would happen if 

the subject lost his partner, at a specific time during the trials, his partner had to

leave for an appointment. The subject answered the questions incorrectly but

less than when his partner agreed with the majority.

    When supported by another person, the target feels less pressure to agree

with the majority, but if alone, he will answer incorrectly. Solomon E. Asch

provides many examples on how social pressure is common in our lives. He

supports each experiment with statistics that prove to us that it is easier forget

our own opinion to follow a group.

 I had a hard time reading this article, the termilogy was a little advance. It

could also be that I’m not used to reading articles about psychology with a lot of

statistics. The article was good, I agree with his work and experiments, it was

very detailed with numerous examples. Next time I will chose a different article,

something I might understand better.

Short Essay DRAFT 1

Danielle Bérubé                                                ENG 213     

Short essay #1

Opinions and Social Pressure

    Social Psychologist Solomon E. Asch wrote an article called "Opinions and

Social Pressure," his goal was to discover the influence a group has on an

Individual with a "series of simple but ingenious experiments on the influence of

group pressure upon the individual." Group pressure is common in our society, it

is important that scientist research the process of opinions and the fuction of

social circumstances.

Solomon Asch and his associates wanted to find out how group pressure affects 

individuals by experimenting with a group of seven to nine college men. They

compare the length of a single line to three other lines and match it to the single

line. Everone gives their answers in the order of where they are seated. On the

first two trials everyone has a common answer but on the third trial, one person

disagrees with the rest of the group. He continues to give his answers and they

continue to be different from the rest of the group, " he may pause before

announcing his answer and speak in a low voice, or he may smile in an

embarrassed way" affirms Asch. The reason why there is only one person that

disagrees with the rest of the group is because he is the main subject, the others

were told to give the wrong answers to see how the subject would react in

minority, he will either stick to his opinion or succumb to the pressure of the

group. Asch modified his experiment by adding a "truthfull partner", there was

now less presure on the subject, he answered falsely "one forth as often as

under pressure of a unanimous majority. " Asch decided  to see what would

happen if the subject lost his partner to the majority, after a few trials, the partner

joined the majority and the answers of the subject increased with errors.

   When supported by another person, the target feels less pressured to agree

with the majority, but if alone, he will answer incorrecly. Solomon E. Asch

provides many examples on how social pressure is common in our lives. He

supports each experiment with statistics that prove to us that it is easier forget our

own opinion to follow a group.