Young children who play violent video games are less likely to feel bad when their friends are upset, and more likely to think a slap should be answered with a slap, a new University of Toledo study concludes.

Clinical psychologist Jeanne Funk and a team of UT researchers administered questionnaires to 150 Lucas County fourth and fifth graders about their exposure to media violence. Surveys also measured the children s capacity for empathy and their attitudes about violence.

“The implication is that parents need to be more diligent in investigating the content of video games and the amount of violence children are exposed to,” Dr. Funk said.

The study found that kids who spent the most time playing violent video games were the most likely to agree with statements such as: “People with guns or knives are cool,” and, “Parents should tell their kids to fight if they have to.”

Those same children were more likely to disagree with statements such as: “When I m mean to someone, I generally feel bad about it later,” or “I m happy when my teacher says my friend did a good job.”

The study, published in the current Journal of Adolescence, also found a correlation between viewing violent movies and these attitudes.

But such research has its critics.

“There is no evidence of any convincing kind that games cause kids to be violent or desensitizes them to violence, said Jonathan Freedman of the University of Toronto.

Instead, the studies confuse cause with effect. Aggressive children may simply prefer violent games, he said.

Dr. Funk does not wholly disagree.

“It s a possibility that kids who start out with lower empathy are drawn to violent video games,” she said. “But I don t see that playing a violent video game is going to improve that situation.”

Brad Bushman, a University of Michigan researcher who examined 85 studies of video-game violence, said the scientific evidence is clear: “Video games increase aggressive thoughts and angry feelings. They increase arousal levels such as heart rate and blood pressure. They increase aggressive behavior and they decrease helping behavior.”

These effects were evident even in children who were randomly assigned to play either a violent game or a nonviolent game, Dr. Bushman said, which removes any chance that the negative effects were only found in naturally aggressive children.

But supervising video-game violence may be a problem for parents, Dr. Funk said. Many games are fairly benign at the lowest skill level, and grow increasingly violent as the player s skill increases.

For instance, the game Grand Theft Auto begins as a racing game. But as the players moves up in the competition, they receive points for knocking a policeman off his motorcycle and running down pedestrians. At one point, the player can hire a prostitute, have sex with her, then knock her out and get their money back.

“The industry says these games are not for kids. They re only for adults. But the reality is, kids can get their hands on them. They have their parents buy it, and the parents don t really understand what the content eventually is, she said.

Most troubling, Dr. Funk says, is that young players of these games are still developing their sense of right and wrong.

“Their moral scaffolding isn t well developed. So if they are regularly exposed to these sort of messages that violence is OK, violence is fun. You just get another life, then it s never bad. It s only fun.

First Published February 11, 2004, 12:15 p.m.