Do the metallic sounds coming out of the video game your
children are riveted to give you stress? It's not surprising!
Odrée Dionne-Fournelle, who is completing her bachelor's
degree in orthophonics at Université de Montréal,
has just demonstrated that the music in video games causes
a measurable physiological reaction in the body: it raises
the level of cortisol, a hormone linked to stress.
This could be harmful to your health: in fact, people who
have naturally high cortisol levels present a risk of cardiovascular
disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and chronic stress.
An earlier American study suggested that the effects of
video games on the body were similar to those observed
in stress situations, i.e., a rise in blood pressure and
heart and respiratory rate. But it is the first time anyone
has gone to the source of the problem. “One day,
one of my professors told me she felt stressed when her
son played on the computer. That's when I became interested
in the sound aspect of games,” explains Odrée
Dionne-Fournelle.
Fifty-two men, aged 19 to 30 years, sat down at the terminal
for the experiment. In this study, they were asked to play
intensive sessions of QUAKE III, a pursuit game that is
very well known to gamers. The idea is to kill robots.
One group played with music, and the other without. Measurements
of salivary cortisol confirmed Ms. Dionne-Fournelle's hypothesis:
fifteen minutes after the end of the test, the “silent” players
secreted less cortisol than the other players. “The
music-free group posted similar performances to the other
group, but several players indicated they found it strange
to play in silence. Even though the stress caused by the
music is associated with the positive stimulus the players
seek, the body cannot distinguish it from a harmful noise
that causes negative stress,” the researcher notes.
The results are convincing, but still not enough to make
a case against Super Mario and his friends. “In order
to avoid introducing a bias in the survey, we only tested
people who were playing for the first time: so we don't
know how habitual players react. Either they no longer
respond to stress caused by the music through a kind of
habituation effect, or their cortisol levels remain higher.”
Researcher: Odrée Dionne-Fournelle
Direction: Sylvie Hébert, sylvie.hebert@umontreal.ca
Telephone: (514) 340-3540
Email: odree.dionne-fournelle@umontreal.ca
