Abstract
Current research refers to videogames as a constant variable. However, games today are designed to be highly interactive and versatile: two players may be using the same videogame, but as a result of different using patterns, the game will not necessarily encompass the same content and gameplay. The current study examined the possible relationship between psychopathology and in-game playing patterns. We hypothesized that adolescents would play videogames differently, in a manner that would reflect their particular psychopathologies. We examined 47 male adolescents from three diagnostic groups: those suffering from externalizing psychopathologies, internalizing psychopathologies and controls. We performed a high-resolution examination of their gameplay, using in-game quantitative statistics mechanisms of two fundamentally different games, a structured racing game and an unstructured adventure game. While there was no difference in the groups' using patterns of the structured game, there was a high variability between the groups' using patterns when they were using a non-structured game. These findings suggest that virtual behavior in unstructured games is reflective of adolescent-players psychopathology, and might shed light on an unexplored facet of videogames research. Possible implications are discussed.
Highlights
Playing videogames has become a central leisure activity in the lives of adolescents and young adults in particular [1], and there has been much debate about the effects of this activity, and its possible connection to psychopathology [2]
The study showed that this variability of behavior does not exist in relation to structured games, a finding which is in keeping with the existing literature [15,16,20]
The fact that in those games we found no difference between children with psychopathology and healthy controls, is puzzling, as these games often utilize and measure attributes similar to the ones that cognitive tests utilize and measure to evaluate ADHD
Summary
Playing videogames has become a central leisure activity in the lives of adolescents and young adults in particular [1], and there has been much debate about the effects of this activity, and its possible connection to psychopathology [2]. Most studies have focused on two major dimensions: screen-time (i.e., the time spent playing games, and addictive patterns) [6,7,8] and the content of the games ( violent content) [4,9]. While some studies have been able to link screen-time and violent content to psychopathology [10], the results of other studies have not borne out such a link and have instead offered alternative explanations for these findings [11].
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