The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between computer games, academic self-efficacy and cognitive needs. Another research question was how much pupils play the computer games.
The subject of this study were 449 childre...
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between computer games, academic self-efficacy and cognitive needs. Another research question was how much pupils play the computer games.
The subject of this study were 449 children of 244 boys and 205 girls in the 6th-grade. They were randomly extracted from 11 elementary schools in changwon : 8 schools(331 children) in urban region and 3 schools(118 children) in rural.
The Questionnaire of Computer Game Use (QCGU), Computer Game Addiction Scale (CGAS), Self-efficacy Scale, and Cognitive Needs Scale were administered to the subject. Statistical analyses were performed with SPSS 10.0.
The findings of the research were as follows;
First, The boys played computer games more often than the girls. And there was no significant difference between the residential areas and academic marks.
Second, the boys were more addicted to the games than the girls, with addiction level itself not so high. But the more they were adsorbed in the games, the lower were the academic marks.
Third, as they played more computer games, lower was the academic self-efficacy. Among the sub-scale, they had self-confidence the most, but it had no relation with how much they played computer games.
Forth, the more the children play the computer games, the less they had cognitive needs.
Fifth, the relationship between cognitive-needs level and use of computer games was negative.
Based on the results of the present study, teachers in schools, in cooperation with the parents, can lead the students to have right use of computer. Guiding them to have right use of computer and training them to prevent them from having side-effects of computer use, we can enlighten students to play games less, as well as develope method for information-oriented education for children to improve their academic abilities.