Screen violence ‘desensitizes teenage brains’
By Vigilant
October 20th, 2010
Violent films and video games really do numb the brains of teenagers, with repeated viewings making them less sensitive to aggression, according to a new study.
暴力電影和視頻遊戲真的確會麻木十多歲青少年的大腦，以重覆視野使他們對侵略不太敏感，根據一項新研究。
The researchers used brain scans to show how they become less emotionally responsive to violence the more they see.
They say it is among the first hard physiological evidence for the theory that on-screen violence leads to real-world aggression.
For years campaigners have argued that watching violent films and playing games like Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Modern Warfare makes youngsters more prone to violence. In the Grand Theft Auto series, players become characters who win points for carjacking, killing prostitutes and running over pedestrians.
Summarising his findings, Dr Jordan Grafman, of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, US, said: “Exposure to the most violent videos inhibits emotional reactions to similar aggressive videos over time and implies that normal adolescents will feel fewer emotions over time as they are exposed to similar videos.”
He added: “Continued exposure to violent videos will make an adolescent less sensitive to violence, more accepting of violence, and more likely to commit aggressive acts since the emotional component associated with aggression is reduced and normally acts as a brake on aggressive behaviour.”
For the study, Dr Grafman and his team recruited 22 boys aged 14 to 17.
They were asked to watch a series of 60 four-second video clips, arranged randomly in three lots of 20 clips.
The degree of violence and aggression in each scene was low, mild or moderate. There were no extreme scenes.
The boys were asked to rate the aggression of each scene compared to the last by pressing one of two response buttons.
As they watched, their brain activity were monitored using MRI scans.
Electrodes were also attached to their fingers to measure small second-by-second changes in sweat levels – known as skin conductance responses (SCRs) – another indicator of emotional state.
Dr Grafman said: “We found that as the boys were exposed to more violent videos over time, their activation in brain regions concerned with emotional reactivity decreased and that was reflected in the data from the functional MRI and in the skin conductance responses.”
In particular, the area of the brain known as the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC), which is thought to be involved in emotions and emotional responses, became increasingly desensitised over time.
This was most marked after watching the most aggressive clips.
Dr Grafman noted: “No prior study has examined this from the complete perspective we had that included behaviour, brain activation, and SCRs in adolescent brains.”
The study has been published online in the Oxford Journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
But Prof Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University, said such studies could not prove a causal link between watching violent images and committing real-life violence.
He said: “I don’t think anybody would deny that people do become desensitised to violence. But the real issue is whether that in and of itself causes negative consequences.”
People were not simply slaves to the biological processes of their bodies and brains, he said. How they behaved also depended on a host of psychological and social factors, such as how much violence they experienced as children.
http://vigilantcitizen.com/?p=5216
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