Videogames for health (G4H) offer exciting, innovative, potentially highly effective methods for increasing knowledge, delivering persuasive messages, changing behaviors, and influencing health outcomes. Although early outcome results are promising, additional research is needed to determine the game design and behavior change procedures that best promote G4H effectiveness and to identify and minimize possible adverse effects. Guidelines for ideal use of different types of G4H by children and adolescents should be elucidated to enhance effectiveness and minimize adverse effects. G4H stakeholders include organizational implementers, policy makers, players and their families, researchers, designers, retailers, and publishers. All stakeholders should be involved in G4H development and have a voice in setting goals to capitalize on their insights to enhance effectiveness and use of the game. In the future, multiple targeted G4H should be available to meet a population's diverse health needs in developmentally appropriate ways. Substantial, consistent, and sophisticated research with appropriate levels of funding is needed to realize the benefits of G4H.

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Games for Health for Children—Current Status and Needed Research

Videogamesforhealth(video-G4H)offerexciting,innovative,potentiallyhighlyeffectivemethodsforincreasing knowledge, delivering persuasive messages, changing behaviors, and influencing health outcomes. Although early outcome results are promising, additional research is needed to determine the game design and behavior change procedures that best promote G4H effectiveness and to identify and minimize possible adverse effects. Guidelines for ideal use of different types of G4H by children and adolescents should be elucidated to enhance effectiveness and minimize adverse effects. G4H stakeholders include organizational implementers, policy makers, players and their families, researchers, designers, retailers, and publishers. All stakeholders should be involved in G4H development and have a voice in setting goals to capitalize on their insights to enhance effectiveness and use of the game. In the future, multiple targeted G4H should be available to meet a population’s diversehealthneedsindevelopmentallyappropriateways.Substantial,consistent,andsophisticatedresearchwith appropriate levels of funding is needed to realize the benefits of G4H.

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White Paper: Games for Health for Children—Current Status and Needed Research

It will come as no surprise to readers that corporal punishment of children is a controversial issue throughout the United States, including within academia, in political arenas, and among the public at large. The academic debate is largely divided into those who argue that corporal punishment in some circumstances is effective and sometimes necessary to discipline children (Baumrind, 1996; Larzelere, 1993) and those who assert that there is very little benefit and rather a substantial risk of harm from using corporal punishment on children (Gershoff, 2002; Lytton, 1997; McCord, 1997; Straus, 2001). The debate also continues among the public, with popular press newspapers and magazines continuing to publish articles each year regarding the debate about pros and cons of using corporal punishment with children. In 2006 alone, articles appeared in American Baby (Lorenzi, 2006), Men’s Health (“Corporal Punishment,” 2006), The New York Times (Lyman, 2006), Parenting (O’Callaghan, 2006), Time (Paul, 2006), and USA Today (Jones, 2006), among many other similar publications. What may come as more of a surprise to Americans is that discussions of corporal punishment of children outside the United States have moved beyond

The case against corporal punishment of children: Converging evidence from social science research and international human rights law and implications for U.S. public policy.

The question of whether physical punishment is helpful or harmful to the development of children has been subject to hundreds of research studies over the past several decades. Yet whether causal conclusions can be drawn from this largely nonexperimental research and whether the conclusions generalize across contexts are issues that remain unresolved. In this article, the authors summarize the extent to which the empirical research on physical punishment meets accepted criteria for causal inference. They then review research demonstrating that physical punishment is linked with the same harms to children as is physical abuse and summarize the extant research that finds links between physical punishment and detrimental outcomes for children are consistent across cultural, family, and neighborhood contexts. The strength and consistency of the links between physical punishment and detrimental child outcomes lead the authors to recommend that parents should avoid physical punishment, psychologists should advise and advocate against it, and policymakers should develop means of educating the public about the harms of and alternatives to physical punishment. (PsycINFO Database Record

The strength of the causal evidence against physical punishment of children and its implications for parents, psychologists, and policymakers.

There is broad consensus: Media researchers agree that violent media increase aggression in children, and pediatricians and parents concur

Comments on the article, "Violent video games and the Supreme Court: Lessons for the scientific community in the wake of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association," by C. J. Ferguson (see record 2013-04752-001). The commentators agree with Ferguson that the U.S. Supreme Court case involving violent video games offers scientists a unique opportunity to reflect on violent video game research and findings. However, they disagree with many of the points he made. Due to space limits, they focus on five major areas of disagreement: 1) The Supreme Court decision was based on the First Amendment, not scientific evidence, 2) comparison of two amicus briefs, 3) some disagreement in the field does mean that the field is evenly divided, 4) what constitutes a trivial effect, and 5) laboratory measures of aggression are not trivial. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved). Language: en

Supreme Court decision on violent video games was based on the First Amendment, not scientific evidence.

Recent research on the impact of spanking children indicates that spanking is a dangerous disciplinary practice. Scientific studies released in the past ten years in particular have demonstrated more clearly than ever before that physical assault on children as a child-rearing method may cause a variety of personal and societal ills, including an increase in the child's aggression level, decreased cognitive functioning, and increased psychological and physical ailments. Other countries have responded to this research by banning child corporal punishment altogether, including parental spanking in the privacy of one's home. This Article argues that America should follow the global trend to ban child spanking. Current American law supports violence against children by providing tort and criminal privileges for child corporal punishment. However, the policy supporting these privileges - the idea that corporal punishment is beneficial to children and helps them to become healthy, productive citizens - has been severely undermined by the recent scientific research indicating just the opposite. Therefore, the privileges should be abolished as obsolete. In addition, American child abuse jurisprudence employs a parent-motive-centered approach, which essentially divests the child of the protection potentially afforded by child abuse laws. Current child abuse jurisprudence should change and center on the harm to the child, not the parent's motive. In addition, child abuse jurisprudence should recognize the reality that severe emotional harm can result from subabusive corporal punishment in the absence of physical injury. These changes to American law collectively would result in heightened societal awareness of the dangers of child corporal punishment and ultimately lessen the amount of violence perpetrated against American children, leading to a less violent society.

Banning Child Corporal Punishment

Recent breakthroughs in social psychology have resulted in the ability to measure unconscious bias scientifically. Studies indicate that prejudiced responses are largely unconscious, the result of normal cognitive processing and stereotypical associations of which the prejudiced subject may be completely unaware. The studies also indicate that a subject's awareness of the discrepancy between her conscious, egalitarian value system and her unconscious prejudice is a critical step towards the convergence of her cognitive functioning and her egalitarian viewpoints. Antidiscrimination legislation requires a showing of intent to discriminate to obtain relief in all but a small percent of circumstances. The result is a legal framework that does not, and cannot, properly redress most instances of discrimination. While the use of unconscious-bias testing may be more effective than antidiscrimination legislation in identifying and redressing the cognitive phenomenon of discrimination, evidence law does not support its use because test results are not privileged against discovery in discrimination lawsuits. This Article argues that in light of the enormous potential social benefit of unconscious-bias testing, a qualified evidentiary privilege should be recognized to encourage its use.

Unconscious Bias and Self-Critical Analysis: The Case for a Qualified Evidentiary Equal Employment Opportunity Privilege

Scientific research on the adverse cognitive, emotional, and psychological consequences of spanking children warrant state action to ban all corporal punishment, including parental spanking. New state laws to ban child corporal punishment would be constitutional under either the state's police power or parens patrie power to protect children.

Banning Corporal Punishment: A Constitutional Analysis

Existing wrongful life jurisprudence departs from established tort jurisprudence and is not consistent with public policy. This area of the law should be reformed to comport with fundamental tort policy and to further social justice.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=1307188

Deana Pollard-Sacks

Papers

Supreme Court decision on violent video games was based on the First Amendment, not scientific evidence.

Banning Child Corporal Punishment

Unconscious Bias and Self-Critical Analysis: The Case for a Qualified Evidentiary Equal Employment Opportunity Privilege

Banning Corporal Punishment: A Constitutional Analysis

Wrongful Analysis in Wrongful Life Jurisprudence