The first step of our search was to look up our topic using the list of databases provided by Chris Cox from the Gordon Library. We first searched for the keywords ``video game'' and ``violent computer game'' on Psychinfo. The former yielded several useful results however the latter did not. The search was continued through the ScienceDirect and SocialSciIndex databases and then other internet search engines, such as Google.com, Search.com, and Ask.com. The keywords used on these databases included: ``games affect cognition'', ``video games attention'', ``video games'', ``video games perception'', ``video game cognitive processes'', ``are cognitive processes negatively affected by video games?'', ``do video games positively affect cognitive processes?'', and ``do video games negatively affect cognitive processes?''. The combination of these search engines with these keywords yielded over 300 possible results, which does not include google's unrealistically high estimate of 1,450,000 returned pages. For example, a large number of these web based resources were written on May 8th or 9th and were rewrites of an article that ran on AP Newswire that itself is a summary and quote of the research by Green and Bavelier[8]. Unfortunately due to the aforementioned problem and others, these web based search engines returned results that we deemed unreliable or non-useful and thus were not considered when drawing our conclusions. After sieving the massive number of possible candidate documents for inclusion into the paper, we settled upon 20 valid articles or experiments upon which to focus our scrutiny. Further study showed that some of these articles definitively answered our thesis question and thus provided sufficient data to reach a conclusion.
The journal documents we chose tended to be detailed, well thought out and well executed. For example, ``The difference between playing games with and without the computer: a preliminary view.'' [5] This article enumerates through the exacting details involved in the experiment: the participant selection and breakdown thereof, the materials and descriptions of the games played, the procedures and results which includes graphs, and the breakdown of the outcome. Another experiment we examined was built upon minimizing the flaws of earlier ones that came before.
Most of the group's research results were available either in physical form from WPI subscribed journals such as Nature and Human Communication Research, or in electronic form from online journal databases. Regardless of the nature of the articles we found, the works cited by each tended to closely overlap each other. From this, it was concluded that the documents on the subject matter selected by the group were valid and reliable.