Media Addiction

Home to open-access resources for studying morality, cooperation, and moral language.

Video Game Addiction

 

Drawing on data from more than 4,200 adolescents in the NIH-funded Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, our research clarifies a long-standing question: does gaming cause mental health problems, or do existing mental health challenges increase the risk of gaming disorder?

 

Using three years of longitudinal data and advanced statistical modeling, we found that psychopathology predicts later gaming disorder, but not the other way around. Adolescents experiencing depression, anxiety, or social difficulties were more likely to develop problematic gaming behaviors over time. These findings suggest that addressing underlying mental health needs, rather than restricting game play alone, may be key to preventing and treating gaming disorder.

 

Read more here! 

Video Game Addiction Is on the Rise. Here's What It Looks Like | Discover Magazine

Asteroid Impact

 

Asteroid Impact is a point-and-click style video game where subjects use a cursor to collect crystal-shaped targets that are displayed at different locations while avoiding asteroids that bounce around the screen. All aspects of the game can be manipulated with a high level of experimental control. The stimulus records all game events with 16ms temporal resolution, which are then output as a .csv file.

 

Asteroid Impact is written in Python, is platform agnostic, and can synchronize with TTL triggers. The game features an open source license (CC BY-SA 4.0), and is freely available to the research community. Those wishing to further develop Asteroid Impact or download experimental releases can do so on Github.

 

Experience Asteroid Impact by playing the online demo version.