(MINNEAPOLIS) - A new study by Douglas Gentile, Ph.D., director of research for the National Institute on Media and the Family and psychology professor at Iowa State University, finds the "best practices" of learning and instruction are used in violent video games. Dr. Gentile is presenting his study on Saturday, April 9, 2005, at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Atlanta, Georgia.

"The best teachers know how to get kids to learn well," said Dr. Gentile. "Excellent teachers provide multiple approaches to a concept which helps children transfer knowledge to the real world, they help children practice a little each day rather than cramming, and they get children excited and hooked on learning. Violent video games use all of these techniques, and our children are learning from them."

Participants in the study were elementary school children in grades 3 to 5, young adolescents in grades 8 and 9, and late adolescents enrolled in a large Midwestern University. The study examined three principles of learning in relation to violent video games.

First, to teach for transfer, the same underlying concept must be taught in multiple contexts. If students play multiple violent games, then they should show more aggressive thoughts and behaviors than students who play a mix of types of games. This pattern was found.

Second, learning and memory are better if one practices a little every day rather than a lot at once. If students play many times a week for years, then they should show more aggressive thoughts and behaviors than students who play for similar amounts of time, but in fewer, but longer, chunks. This pattern was also found, but only for students who played violent games (as was predicted).

Third, great teachers try to get students so excited about a topic that they become obsessed with it. Video games have been said to have an "addictive" quality. The study found that students who can be classified as addicted to video games had more aggressive thoughts and more aggressive behaviors.

"In sum, violent video games use many of the same techniques that great teachers use. This study shows that children are likely to learn aggressive patterns of thoughts and behaviors from them," said Dr. Gentile. He noted the data in the study are correlational and cannot conclude that violent video games actually caused the changes in aggressive cognition and behavior.

Copies of Violent Video Games as Exemplary Teachers are available upon request.