The influence of parental guidance on video game performance, exploration, and cortical activity in 5-year-old children

Digital games are a part of children's everyday life. Parental guidance may influence what children learn from digital games, but children also often play digital games alone. There is a need to study learning from digital games in the presence and absence of parental guidance. We compared exploration and learning to play the video game Rock Band 3 over 10 weeks at home in parent-guided (n = 25) and self-directed (n = 25) groups, relative to a control group (n = 27). We recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG) at rest to add to our understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms involved in adapting to these learning experiences. Children in the parent-guided group explored the learning space more than children in the self-directed group, and children in the parent-guided group showed a greater capacity to learn to play a new song relative to the control group. However, improvement in performance was comparable for children in the parent-guided and self-directed groups. Learning to play the game induced change in the brain for both the parent-guided and self-directed groups. However, children in the parent-guided group showed lower EEG power relative to pre-study levels, and children in the self-directed group showed higher EEG power relative to pre-study levels. Findings shed new light on the neurophysiological mechanisms involved in adapting to learning experiences and inform our understanding of learning from digital games with and without parental guidance.