English immersive game participation and attention, emotional health, and cognitive function in children: a cross-sectional study

Background Screen exposure is an important issue for children’s health. The existing research pays more attention to the duration of use, but not to the content type and immersion experience. English immersion game integrates language learning and game mechanism, which belongs to educational digital behavior. This study analyzes the daily English game duration, immersion and English integration of children aged 6–14, and their relationships with attention, working memory, executive function and emotional behavior. Methods This retrospective cross-sectional study included 215 children. Based on the parents’ questionnaire, the data of English game participation were obtained: daily duration, 1–5 immersion self-evaluation, and English integration. The outcome includes all kinds of attention, working memory, executive function, emotion and ADHD symptoms. Multivariate linear regression controls total screen time, sleep, physical activity, age, gender and family SES. CPT, Flanker and Corsi were the main outcomes, and after Bonferroni correction, the four executive function and behavior indicators were set as exploratory outcomes, which were not corrected. Results English game time is positively correlated with selective attention ( β = 0.218, p = 0.001). It is significantly different from the primary analysis of working memory, and its effect size fell below the minimum-detectable-effect threshold following Bonferroni correction. Immersion self-rating is positively correlated with multiple attention and working memory, and negatively correlated with emotional symptoms. The degree of English integration is positively correlated with cognitive indicators and negatively correlated with emotional symptoms; After excluding the pure-English-immersion subgroup, the association with selective attention and inhibition control is no longer significant, and it is regarded as descriptive association. Daily screen time was negatively correlated with cognitive ability, and positively correlated with mood and ADHD symptoms (all p < 0.001). Conclusion Different dimensions of English immersion games are related to children’s cognitive and emotional outcomes. In addition to the duration of use, the integration of game English is as important as the immersion experience. The results can provide reference for family digital activity selection, children’s screen behavior norms and campus digital education intervention, which still needs to be verified by longitudinal research.