Siegler and Ramani have shown that playing simple board games can improve number line performance in children, and also improves their numerical knowledge in general. One of their papers:
Ramani, G.B. & Siegler, R. S. (2008). Promoting Broad and Stable Improvements in Low-Income Children’s Numerical Knowledge Through Playing Number Board Games. Child Development, March/April 2008, Volume 79, Number 2, Pages 375 – 394
We also did a nice project - the mobile quest based gaming platform for children, named Quest for Knowledge. The results were very encouraging and we even managed to motivate our young players/pupils into a "flow" state. Here is the abstract to get a better idea of the platform:
"Abstract.This paper presents a platform for mobile educational games, named "Quest for Knowledge." The platform allows for creation of interactive educational games that include a multimedia content (video, audio, documents, maps) and playing of games outside classrooms. Students access the games using personal computers and mobile terminals (phones, PDAs). The usual gamescenarios include team-based solving of specific tasks and missions. The games are remotely monitored and managed by the teacher who interacts with teams, gives hints and
guidance which lead to the final result. The concept of development and playing of mobile educational games has been developed under the project eMAPPS, 6 EU Framework Programme and tested in groups of more than 200 students and teachers in Slovenia and other European countries. The evaluation of games played in Slovenia has indicated a very strong acceptance of the concept, especially by elementary-school children."
Here's a peer-reviewed, randomized controlled study (N=49( showing improvement in lab measures of emotion recognition and face recognition, as well as in blinded observations of playground interactions with peers for school aged children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder who played FaceSay computer games for 10-12 30 minute sessions.
The paper includes a review of other promising projects, and provides interesting data to the larger question of can a computer game really improve the everyday social skills of students with an ASD.
Do you know the book of Thomas Connolly (2011) Leading Issues in Games-Based Learning Research, API publishing? It is a collection of cases from a variety of different domains
I think the book Grand Theft Childhood, by Kutner & Olsen also deserves recommendation in this context. It takes quite a nuanced approach to the effects of violent video games on children. There's a summary of the book's content on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Childhood