After half an hour of play, pre-schoolers react more quickly but are less able to ignore distracting stimuli

A short gaming session can temporarily alter the way pre-school children allocate their attention. After 30 minutes of gaming, the children noticed the relevant stimuli more quickly, but performed less well on tasks that required them to suppress distractions and control their responses.

At the same time, there was almost no difference between the video game and a standard puzzle: a similar effect was observed after playing both *Mario Kart 8 Deluxe* and a tangram.

Details

The study was conducted by Giovanna Puccio, Sandro Franceschini, Andrea Facoetti, Sara Bertoni and their colleagues from Italian universities. The paper was published in the journal *Computers in Human Behaviour Reports*.

The experiment involved 48 typically developing children with an average age of 5.4 years. Each child took part in three conditions: a control condition without gaming, 30 minutes of the video game Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and 30 minutes of the traditional Tangram puzzle. The order of the gaming conditions was randomised.

Immediately after each condition, the children completed tasks testing speech sound processing, visual search, attention and motor coordination. After both games, they performed better on tasks requiring them to quickly spot an important stimulus. In particular, there was an improvement in accuracy on the sound discrimination task and in the speed of locating a visual target without distracting elements.

However, when the task became more complex and required ignoring distractions, the results changed. With a large number of visual distractors, performance declined, and in some tests there was also a slight deterioration in phonological short-term memory and less stable motor accuracy.

The authors believe that the issue may not lie with the screen itself, but rather with deep immersion in the game. According to their interpretation, a brief, emotionally intense activity temporarily redirects resources towards rapid responses to salient cues, leaving fewer resources for the more demanding task of executive control.

Why this is important

The findings may be useful when planning activities with young children. Immediately after intense play may not be the best time for tasks that require sustained concentration, inhibiting impulsive reactions and ignoring distractions. However, this period may be better suited to activities where reaction speed and rapid information detection are important.

That said, the study does not show that play in general makes children more attentive or, conversely, more distracted. It measured only the short-term effect immediately following a 30-minute session. The sample size was small, only two games were used, and the conclusions are based on behavioural tests. The authors specifically note that other types of games and individual characteristics of children may yield different results.

The experimental cross-over design allows us to speak with reasonable confidence about short-term changes specifically under these conditions, but not about the long-term impact of games on the development of attention, learning or behaviour.

Source

The main source is the study ‘Brief digital and traditional gameplay transiently reallocate attentional resources in preschool children’, published in *Computers in Human Behaviour Reports*, Volume 23, 2026, article 101183. Additional material is from the BIAL Foundation and Phys.org.