Action video game (AVG) has attracted increasing attention from both the public and from researchers. More and more studies found video game training improved a variety of cognitive functions. However, it remains controversial whether healthy adults can benefit from AVG training, and whether young and older adults benefit similarly from AVG training. In the present study, we aimed to quantitatively assess the AVG training effect on the cognitive ability of adults and to compare the training effects on young and older adults by conducting a meta-analysis on previous findings. We systematically searched video game training studies published between January 1986 and July 2015. Twenty studies were included in the present meta-analysis, for a total of 313 participants included in the training group and 323 participants in the control group. The results demonstrate that healthy adults achieve moderate benefit from AVG training in overall cognitive ability and moderate to small benefit in specific cognitive domains. In contrast, young adults gain more benefits from AVG training than older adults in both overall cognition and specific cognitive domains. Age, education, and some methodological factors, such as the session duration, session number, total training duration, and control group type, modulated the training effects. These meta-analytic findings provide evidence that AVG training may serve as an efficient way to improve the cognitive performance of healthy adults. We also discussed several directions for future AVG training studies.
After completing schooling, young workers face critical labor market choices with long-ranging consequences for future jobs and lifetime earnings, while many of them also drink alcohol to excess. In this paper, we provide evidence on whether the drinking choices of young adults also have longranging consequences for future jobs and lifetime earnings. In doing so we extend previous research on the productivity effects of alcohol to include non-wage job attributes as part of total employee compensation. The goal of this research is to establish benchmark empirical patterns describing relationships between alcoholism and job choice. Our empirical results based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data show that male alcoholics are less likely to receive a variety of fringe benefits, are more likely to be injured on the job, and work for smaller firms. When the conventional methodology is extended to include non-wage job attributes, of an estimated total loss of $2,380 per alcoholic, about $450, or almost 20% or the total, is the value of the lost fringe benefits. The data also show that male alcoholics are less likely to be in a white collar occupation but conditional upon being in a white collar occupation their earnings are similar to their non-alcoholic peers. While alcoholics are more likely to be in a blue collar occupation, conditional upon being in such an occupation they are estimated to earn 15 percent less than their non-alcoholic peers. These findings can help evaluate more systematically and more accurately the potential effects and interactions between alcohol, education, and income policies and health policy.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.