Mar 24, 2014 09:56 PM EDT By Jaleesa Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Children who repeatedly play violent video games may be learning aggressive ways of thinking and behaving, according to a recent study.

Researchers from Iowa State University suggest that regardless of age, gender or culture, children who play violent video games start to think more aggressively. And when provoked at home, school or in other situations, children will react much like they do when playing a violent video game, according to a press release.

Douglas Gentile, an associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study published in JAMA Pediatrics, said it is no different than learning math or how to play a piano.

"If you practice over and over, you have that knowledge in your head. The fact that you haven't played the piano in years doesn't mean you can't still sit down and play something," Gentile said in a statement. "It's the same with violent games -- you practice being vigilant for enemies, practice thinking that it's acceptable to respond aggressively to provocation, and practice becoming desensitized to the consequences of violence."

For the study, researchers followed more than 3,000 children in third, fourth, seventh and eighth grades for three years. They collected data each year to track the amount of time spent playing video games, the violent content of the game and changes in a child's behavior. The length and size of the study made it possible for researchers to detect and test even small effects.

 Boys reported doing more physically aggressive behaviors and spending more time playing violent games than girls. However, even when researchers controlled for gender, the violent video game effects on behavior were the same for girls and boys.

"The results make a pretty strong argument that gender and age really don't affect this relationship between video game play, aggressive thinking and aggressive behavior,"  Sara Prot, a graduate student in psychology at Iowa State, said in a statement. "There are lasting effects on thinking and behavior. You can't say one group, because of their gender, age or culture, is protected from the effects in some special way."

More than 90 percent of children and teens play video games, and researchers say the majority of those games contain some type of violent content.

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