Background: Over the past two decades, dramatic changes in the environment in which the child develops have occurred. In particular, various digital technologies are increasingly being introduced into the everyday life. What kind of specific effect does this new “digital environment” have for cognitive and brain development in children? The goal of this research was to examine the hypothesis that 7-year-old children with computer game addiction have weakness in visuospatial abilities.

Methods: A total of 84 children aged between 6 years 9 months and 7 years 10 months participated in the study. We used questionnaire for parents to reveal children with computer game addiction. Experimental group consisted of 22 children with computer game addiction. Control group consisted of 22 children without computer game addiction. The children from experimental and control group were matched for IQ, gender and age. To assess the visuospatial abilities in children we have used 4 subtests from NEPSY (Arrows, Block Construction, Design Copying and Route Finding). One-way ANOVA by group was used for revealing differences between experimental and control group.

Results: We have found significant (p≤0,05) differences between groups for scores in 3 subtests from NEPSY (Block Construction, Design Copying and Route Finding). Children from control group performed better visuospatial tasks in comparison to children with computer game addiction.

Conclusions: We have shown that children with computer game addiction have weakness in visuospatial abilities. What are the hypothetical reasons for this result? It can be assumed that interrelation with real world, including diverse physical activity, constructive activity, is a necessary condition for the development of visuospatial abilities. Children who spends a lot of time playing in virtual world have the disadvantage in such interaction. According to this idea we can assume that digital addiction can have negative effect on the development of visuospatial functions in children.