Annotated Bibliography - (Group Research Project)

The first article I found was on the webpage Psychcentral.com, written by Rick Nauert (PHD). Dr. Rick Nauert has over 25 years experience in clinical, administrative, and academic healthcare. He is currently an associate professor for Rocky Mountain University of Health Professionals doctoral program in health promotion and wellness. The article discusses the many ways different types of videogames can impact kids for good or bad, including a study headed by Dr. Douglas Gentile. The study covered kids who repeatedly played violent videogames. According to Dr. Douglas, playing videogames is similar to practicing mathematics or the piano. He states, “If you practice over and over, you have that knowledge in your head. The fact that you haven’t played the piano in years doesn’t mean you can’t still sit down and play something”. As a result researchers found that over time the kids began to think more aggressively. The article appeals to a younger audience because the paragraphs are short and the language is relatively easy to understand. The information in this article seems reliable because it is written by a doctor with a PHD and has been studying in his field for many years.

            The aspect of this article that I would say was most useful was how the information is organized in a way that is easy to understand and gets straight to the point. It presents hard facts and evidence to back up its points using statistics to make the concept clear. The only thing I would have liked to see more of was for the article to go more in depth when describing the experiments that were conducted, just to make it clear that there’s less confusion.

I found a useful article,titled “Feelings of Failure, Not Violent Content, Foster Aggression in Video Gamers” that explores the reasons behind aggression experienced in gamers. Researchers from Oxford University, and The University of Rochester preformed the study. Andrew Przybylski, a researcher at Oxford University conducted an experiment where students played a variety of videogames and there reactions were observed when they felt frustration from loosing in the game. Andrew explains “in our experiments, If you press someone's competencies, they'll become more aggressive, and our effects held up whether the games were violent or not." Basically Andrews point is that the feelings of failure and frustration are more of a cause of aggression rather than the more common belief that the violence is the sole cause. The text is reliable because its not opinion based, everything voiced in the article is derived from experiments and studies.

The website had many images to compliment the content being discussed that added to the detail. As far as weaknesses went in the article there were not many. The only complaint I have is that it could have included more background information on the authors and the people that preformed the studies just so I could get a better feel for who they were and what specific qualifications they had. The strength of the paper was that it showed a non biased viewpoint that was clear and concise.