Many parents forbid their children to play video games because they think it can make children lazy to study. Apparently, video games can be used to help children learn to read.
These are the findings of a recent study conducted by the University of Geneva in Switzerland and the University of Trento in Italy. The results of this study found that children's reading skills improved with just 12 hours of practice, and continued to improve for a year afterward.
Researchers found that playing games can help develop specific skills related to reading ability, such as moving the eyes from top to bottom or using memory to connect words and form sentences.
Researchers also created a video game specifically for this study that combines action games with mini games that can train executive functions such as memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. The game content certainly does not contain violence so that it can be played by children.
150 schoolchildren from Italy aged 8-12 years participated in this study. They were divided into two groups, the first group playing an action video game developed by the research team, and the other group playing the Scratch game, a coding game for children.
In this research action video game, children play characters whose job it is to complete missions in order to save the planet. They then have to complete some specific in-game task with a time limit, such as remembering a specific symbol or responding to a character's specific voice cue.
After the study ended, children who played the researcher's video games showed a seven-fold increase in attention control. Their reading skills also improved, not only in their reading speed but also in their overall accuracy and their Italian grades in school improved.
"What's really interesting about this study is that we conducted three further assessment tests at six months, 12 months and 18 months after training," said Angela Pasqualotto from the University of Trento, as quoted by Phys.
"On each occasion, the trained children performed better than the control group, which proves that this improvement is sustainable."
Because the results of this study are quite impressive, researchers plan to bring this game to more children. This game will be adapted into English, French and German.
This is not the first time researchers have found a link between video games and children's reading ability. In a survey published in 2020, it was revealed that children who play video games may become better readers.