ISU Professor Gets White House Invite to Talk Video Games

Going to the White House: Cool. Video games: Cool.

Going to the White House to talk about video games: Really cool?

Well, it's not all fun and games.

Douglas Gentile, an associate professor of psychology at , has an invitation to the White House next week to lead a discussion about video games affecting behavior.

The White House is hosting a conference called "Enhancing Well-being and Attentional Control through Games and Interactive Media: A Neuroscientific Approach."

In case you hadn't noticed, he is not going to play video games, just talk about them. 

Gentile's session is called "affective/social behavior within video game-based interactions." That is scheduled for Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Indian Treaty Room at the White House. He will be presenting with Chade-Meng Tan, a best-selling author who was one of Google's earliest engineers.

Constance Steinkuehler Squire, a senior policy analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, invited the presenters. Squire is working on Obama Administration policies on games that improve health, education, civic engagement and the environment, among other areas.

Here is more about Gentile's expertise from Iowa State University:

Gentile was author of the landmark study finding that pathological patterns of video game addiction exist in youth (ages 8 to 18) and that nearly one in 10 of the gamers (8.5 percent) are pathological players. He led cross-cultural studies demonstrating that playing prosocial games can increase helpful and cooperative behaviors -- both in the short-term and long-term. He also was one of three Iowa State authors of a book titled "Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents" (Oxford University Press, 2007), which reported on three studies finding evidence of the adverse effects of violent video game exposure on the behavior of children and adolescents.