Violent video games studied as a teaching tool (Gentile & Gentile, 2008)

Now Andrew Eisen asked some questions about the study in gamepolitics.com and I can’t help but to try to answer them. The best practice of getting the right answers is to e-mail the authors themselves, the contact info should be on the first page.

Abstract

This article presents conceptual and empiricalanalyses of several of the ‘‘best practices’’ of learning and instruction, and demonstrates how violent video games use them effectively to motivate learners to persevere in acquiring and mastering a number of skills, to navigate through complex problems and changing environments, and to experiment with different identities until success is achieved. These educational principles allow for the generation of several testable hypotheses, two of which are tested with samples of 430 elementary school children (mean age 10 years), 607 young adolescents (mean age 14 years), and 1,441 older adolescents (mean age 19 years). Participants were surveyed about their video game habits and their aggressive cognitions and behaviors.

The first hypothesis is based on the principle that curricula that teach the same underlying concepts across contexts should have the highest transfer. Therefore, students who play multiple violent video games should be more likely to learn aggressive cognitions and behaviors than those who play fewer.

The second hypothesis is based on the principle that long-term learning is improved the more practice is distributed across time. Therefore, students who play violent video games more frequently across time should be more likely to learn aggressive cognitions and behaviors than those who play the same types of games for equivalent amounts of time but less frequently. Both hypotheses were supported. We conclude by describing what educators can learn from the successful instructional and curriculum design features of video games.

Now on to the questions:

“Why was a second aggression sample only done with the elementary school kids?”

Can’t really answer right away, need time. Maybe after mid-december when i’m done with undergrad thesis proposal.

“How significant was the aggression increase? I look at the table in the study and I have to wonder what the difference between a .33 and .44 overall physical aggression index is.” The table he’s refering is”Table 1″

Now I might be able to answer that. Now the table only show the raw correlational data, you can’t compare correlational scores to predict something. so they used logisitic regression (see in wikipedia).

Now speaking of only the 3-5th graders, they’re trying to predict variables measured at time 1 to time 2 ( measures take on november-February and measures taken April-May). So they controlled several variables from being a factor into their calculation: sex, race, age, lag(?), weekly amounts of video game play, and time 1 hostile attribution bias.

Therefore, figure 1 is what needs to look at, but I haven’t been taught on how to read logistical regressions. so i’m just reading from the text. So controlling all these variables, they found that playing multiple violent video games influence kids concept of aggression as a normal thing and will see things in aggressive terms, so with an aggressive cognition, which would result in more aggressive behaviours. Unfortunately, I do know they have a significant effect, but how large is the effect? Well, i don’t know. Maybe it’s small like Patrick Markey said?

 Update(11/02/08): I’ve finally read the article, see my comments after the break.

Parents’ mediation behaviors to video games (Nikken & Jansz, 2006)

Since John Rice had mentioned me in his blog, I couldn’t help myself to put another paper on this blog despite being in my final undergraduate year with thesis paper and grad school applications. I guess I can’t resist positive reinforcement.

Now some mentioned parenting and video games, surprisingly my PsycINFO search (Parent & video or computer games as my search terms) revealed few papers that seemed revelant to me. Now this paper I got it around mid-october 2007, part of my monthly VG article search.

Update 14/11/2007: there’s an interesting news article about parents’ behaviours and attitudes towards video games. My favorite quote in that article is a parent say “Do something that has some lasting value.” If I get a nickel everytime I hear, I’d be rich. We do things that has no lasting value, looking watching tv or reading a novel, etc. This article says that parents (43%) do nothing about videogames, and just whine about it. But please take a look at the news article.

It is to be about how parents would manage kids’ play with video games.

Abstract

Through an Internet survey of 536 parent–child dyads, the authors researched which mediation strategies parents used to regulate videogaming by their children (8–18 years). Factor analyses revealed that both parents and children distinguished three types of parental mediation: (1) ‘restrictive mediation’, (2) ‘active mediation’, and (3) ‘co-playing’. These strategies are comparable with mediation types that were established in research about television. Comparing the parents’ and children’s reports it was found that both groups had highly congruent views about the application of mediation. Parental mediation of videogaming was most strongly predicted by the child’s age and the parents’s game behavior. Furthermore, parents applied more restrictive and active mediation when they feared negative behavioral effects and more often co-played with their children when they expected positive social-emotional effects of gaming.

Nikken and Jansz examined parental strategies on dealing with children’s video game play, which in it is termed parental mediation. Based on previous research on parental mediation on children’s television watching, they come up with three types:

• Restrictive mediation: Restricting on what their kids can see and how much time they have.
• Active mediation: parents commenting and discussing the T.V. shows that the kids were watching
• Co-playing or co-viewing: parents actively participate in the activity

Sounds nice, but I do wonder whether these mediation strategies have any links to parenting styles. I mean, restrictive mediation sounds like what authoritarian parents would do because they’re so strict on their kids’ behaviours. But I guess there are some good parents who are restrictive. Hmmm… It would mean that mediation strategies depend on parents’ attitude towards certain gaming genres and not in general. Also, I do wonder if co-viewing also includes elements from active mediation, I could imagine kids asking their parents so many questions while watching the telly.

What about active mediation? There should be a sub-group on whether it is effective vs. ineffective, mostly positive vs. negative opinion on content, destructive criticism vs. constructive discussion (i.e. a parent using big words to criticize a show he hates. God! My dad lectures on everything from telemarketers to my buying groceries)

What distinguishes video games and the telly are two things: interactivity and differential social context (e.g. kids play alone or with friends, parents don’t really play video games with their kids, especially the older generation parents, I must ask about the younger generation who grew up with video games).

Alternatively, Nikken and Jansz wrote that parents might use similar mediation strategies they used for television towards video games. IMO, parents probably know much less about video games than their kids and would have to rely on experiences with television. Nikken and Jansz would have agreed, in addition they wrote getting kids’ report on their parents mediation strategies would be invaluable. There are several reasons: kids are actively playing video games, kids’ perception of their parents’ attitudes and behaviours are probably a bigger influence than the actual parental attitudes and behaviours and parents might misreport in order to look good. Most importantly, parents and kids hold different attitudes and beliefs about video games and its content (and use the wrong words to communicate, i.e. some dad: I’m going to turn off the hard drive.)

Predictors of parental mediation are based on parental beliefs and attitudes on a particular media. So parents who are concerned about the negative effects of video games are going to adopt restrictive and active mediation strategies. Those who believe on the positive effects would likely adopt active and co-playing mediation strategies. IMO, if we look further on parenting style or parental hostility or “assholeness” or parental control or right-wing authoritarianism, it might help differentiate parents who use restrictive mediation from active mediation regardless of their media beliefs and attitudes.

Other predictors of parental mediation include children’s age (more likely to mediate with younger kids), gender (more on girls than boys), mothers, education (the higher the more likely, probably those of lower education adopt “neglectful” or non-existent mediation, but I do wonder if lower education would more likely adopt restrictive mediation), family size (the smaller, the more restrictive, probably because parents in bigger family have less time to discuss tv content) and parents media use is positively related to co-playing and co-viewing.

Technological advancement and violence exposure (Ivory & Kalyanaraman, 2007)

I am supposed to be writing something more important that, but somehow it feels more fun (or easy) to be reporting on academic studies.

Abtract

The possible impact of technological advancement on video games’ effects—particularly in the case of violent games—has often been discussed but has not been thoroughly explored by empirical research. The present investigation employed a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial experiment to examine the interplay of technological advancement and violence by exposing participants (N = 120) to either a newer or older version of a violent or nonviolent game and measuring these factors’ effects on players’ sense of presence, involvement, physiological arousal (measured by skin conductance), self-reported arousal, and affective and cognitive aggression. The results indicate that technological advancement increased participants’ sense of presence, involvement, and physiological and self-reported arousal. Neither advancement nor violence had statistically significant effects on accessibility of players’ aggressive thoughts, but there is some tentative evidence that violent game content increased players’ state hostility. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed, and recommendations are made for future research.

One of the technological variables Jack Thompson to argue his case against violent video games is realism and technological advancement. Jack Thompson et al. believes that as games become more realistic, it is more likely to generate psychos on a massacre (and more lawsuits on a court, more laws on a legislature, more restrictions on a video game, more violence on a country) because it blurs the boundaries of reality and fantasy.

Counter-arguments from gamers and the industry are that realism have nothing to do with individuals distinction between reality and fantasy because they do make a distinction between them, even among children. However, Gentile et al. (2007) argue that it is irrelevant and that only violent content in video games have an effect on individuals’ aggression, adult or child. IMO, those who don’t make a distinction between reality and fantasy would already be diagnosed with a mental disorder.

So in this study by Ivory and Kalyanaraman, they will be looking at how video games of different eras differ on individuals’ aggressive cognitions and affect. Other variables included are presence (I’m weak in explaining it: the feeling of actually being in a virtual environment while still feeling in being in the physical world), involvement (“a psychological state experienced as a consequence of focusing one’s energy and attention on a coherent set of stimuli or meaningfully related activities and events”) and arousal.

Video Game Violence and the Female Game Player: Self- and Opponent Gender Effects on Presence and Aggressive Thoughts (Eastin, 2006)

Okay this is my last one for today… I hope. Now following Dr.Eastin’s academic trail, he wrote an article published last year. Since I’m trained in APA, I do find that the words in the title seemed so wrong. All capitalized, how strange…

Abstract

Adding depth and breadth to the general aggression model, this paper presents three experiments that test the relationships among user and opponent gender representation, opponent type, presence, and aggressive thoughts from violent video game play. Studies 1 and 2 suggest that females experience greater presence and more aggressive thoughts from game play when a gender match between self and game character exists. Studies 2 and 3 indicate that playing against a human opponent (rather than a computer) increases aggressive thoughts. Finally, although Studies 1, 2, and 3 indicate that playing as a female against a male opponent increases aggressive thoughts, Studies 1 and 2 suggest that playing as a male against a female opponent consistently and significantly decreases aggressive thoughts.

In this study, Eastin examined the relations on the effect of gender representation in a series of experiments. Now, gender representation means the player’s character’s gender and the opponent’s gender, either from the character or from the opponent player. Other examined relations are the concept of presence, agency of the opponent (human player vs. computer player).

Now, the dependent variable is aggressive thoughts of players (cognition).

One of the aggression factors of violent video games is identification, it is especially true for FPS games. Some games allow a creation process of which players can represent themselves within the game world, such as height, weight, clothes, skin color, hair style and gender. Hence, this creates a connection and an emotional investment between one’s identity and the avatar’s identity. As these identities are connected, in-game behaviours activate cognitive schema within individuals. In FPS games, psychologists would usually view these in-game behaviours as aggressive and violent for good reasons. Thus, repetition of aggressive behaviours and a strong identification to violent characters would lead to more easily accessible cognitive schema of aggression. Mind you, this does not translate directly into aggressive behaviours or attitudes as said in other studies.

Eastin wondered whether gender would be a factor in character identification. For example, a women who plays a female game character would be more likely to aggress. IMO, that depends on how someone views femininity, since it being female can be as caring, compassionate and non-violent. Well I’ll have to think on it further…

Tied to gender representation is presence. I’m a little weak on the concept of presence, as it is a relatively recent concept in social science. Eastin follows presence as “feeling in one even when located in another.” (p.354) However, there are three aspects of “presence”: social, spatial and self. What Eastin is more likely looking at is self-presence and social presence, which fits in this study’s operational definition.

In relation of presence to FPS games, players experience a strong sense of presence, since it is first-person view, we can interact with game objects, or get up-close and personal with the enemy, but importantly serve a point of reference within the virtual environment. I’m not sure if you can follow my summary, but that’s the best I can do.

Digital game playing and direct and indirect aggression in early adolescence: The roles of age, social intelligence, and parent-child communication (Wallenius et al., 2007)

This article was very tricky and again found it by luck. They called video games as digital games, which confounds my search. Again, I seem to can’t resist writing more since that praise from John Rice, Am I that easily pleased?

Abstract

The roles of age, social intelligence and parent-child communication in moderating the association between digital game playing and direct and indirect aggression were examined in 478 Finnish 10- and 13-year-old schoolchildren based on self-reports. The results confirmed that digital game violence was directly associated with direct aggression, especially at age 10, but only among boys. The moderating role of social intelligence was substantiated among older boys: game violence was associated with indirect aggression among those with high level of social intelligence. Further, as hypothesized, digital game playing was associated with direct aggression especially when parent-child communication was poor, but only among boys. Our findings emphasize the importance of individual and situational factors as moderators of the link between game violence and aggression.

Wallenius et al. investigated several interesting variables on the effects of violent video games. I will name them and the rationale behind them.

From birth until adulthood, the body undergoes many developments and changes, physically and mentally. This is quite noticeable in adolescence, where hormones and rapid social changes made most of our lives seem pretty miserable. Psychologically, our mind grows as well as we learn a lot and adapt to changing social environments, from a safe kindergarten to asshole-filled high school life (yes, I hated my high school life). Adolescence goes through a lot of changes and, therefore, individuals are likely to be more tensed and aggressive. So, violent video games would have a stronger effect among adolescent, especially boys

Another concern is the brain’s hard wiring of cognitive schemas, or IMO, personality. So exposure to media violence active cognitive schemas of aggression, if this exposure is chronic and the individual is growing up. It might mean that one’s aggressive cognitive schema in the brain is more active to the detriment of other cognitive schema, such as altruism. Once these neural connections of these cognitions are established and hard-wired, a person is more aggressive than those are not chronically exposed to media violence.  So it is reasoned. Of course, the keyword is chronic, thank goodness for school, well maybe not in high school.

Indirect aggression, using human relationships, others’ feelings, thoughts and behaviours to put oneself in a favourable light and putting down another. Research on the associations between violent video games use and indirect aggression are mixed. So there might be a mediating factor, social intelligence is identified as such and it is defined as the level of social and verbal skills an individual possesses.

Finally, Wallenius et al. will investigate the associations between video game use and quality of parent-child interactions. What is known is that healthy parent-child interactions act as a protective factor on the effects of media violence and aggression. Well, I do believe that parents have one of the largest influences on their children because they are the first socialization influence in life and interact with the most. However, some studies have found that parent-child quality has no or little influence on violent video game effects on aggression. So, it still needs to be clarified.