Relations between violent video games, family violence or intrinsic violence motivation (Ferguson et al., 2008)

WHY at this time?! I have my thesis presentation due tomorrow, my draft paper due the day after and now Brandon Erickson posted a paper by Christopher Ferguson, whose growing presence in my Video Game Psych-Research library is getting my full attention. But why at this time?!

Someone at gamepolitics.com mentioned getting a copy of the paper, but I think the publishers would want monetary compensation. Now that’s a big problem where journalists can’t get their hands on first-hand scientific information, but that’s another story. But I’m an undergrad with access…

Well for now I’m going to skip the rationale and theoretical part of the paper, it’s best to read Brandon’s post before moving on to my post here. Anyways I skimmed on to the methods and results section and skipped their discussion or interpretation part.

Abstract

Two studies examined the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression or violence in the laboratory and in real life. Study 1 participants were either randomized or allowed to choose to play a violent or nonviolent game. Although males were more aggressive than females, neither randomized exposure to violent-video-game conditions nor previous real-life exposure to violent video games caused any differences in aggression. Study 2 examined correlations between trait aggression, violent criminal acts, and exposure to both violent games and family violence. Results indicated that trait aggression, family violence, and male gender were predictive of violent crime, but exposure to violent games was not. Structural equation modeling suggested that family violence and innate aggression as predict.

Longitudinal study on internet and video game use and psychosocial predictors (Willoughby, 2008)

If I knew someone at Brock University was studying media psychology, I would have applied grad studies there… Why did I miss her?! Maybe I should contact her to see if anyone else is also interested in media psychology. 

Abstract

Prevalence, frequency, and psychosocial predictors of Internet and computer game use were assessed with 803 male and 788 female adolescents across 2 time periods, 21 months apart. At Time 1, participants were in the 9th or 10th grade; at Time 2, they were in the 11th or 12th grade. Most girls (93.7%) and boys (94.7%) reported using the Internet at both time periods, whereas more boys (80.3%) than girls (28.8%) reported gaming at both time periods. Girls reported a small decrease over time in the frequency of hours spent per day on overall technology use, mostly due to a decrease in gaming. Both linear and curvilinear relations were examined between parental relationships, friendship quality, academic orientation, and well-being measured in early high school and the frequency of technology use in late high school. Being male significantly predicted both computer gaming and Internet use. There also were trends in favor of higher friendship quality and less positive parental relationships predicting higher frequency of Internet use. Importantly, moderate use of the Internet was associated with a more positive academic orientation than nonuse or high levels of use.

Role of violent video games in adolescent boys’ development (Olson et al., 2008)

Now at gamepolitics.com, Cheryl K. Olson and colleague Lawrence A. Kutner, had a book that’s going to be published in April and a lot of the commentators seem so excited over news that support their beliefs about violent video game effects. Well, I’m not really excited, just interested to hear what she and her colleagues has to say about the violent media research. You can read some excerpts from their website at grandtheftchildhood.com. By the way, I commented that I read her papers, it turns out to be the wrong person, it was Sheryl L. Olson. Well, they sound similar, so it’s a normal and understandable mistake.

 Abstract

Numerous policies have been proposed at the local, state, and national level to restrict youth access to violent video and computer games. Although studies are cited to support policies, there is no published research on how children perceive the uses and influence of violent interactive games. The authors conduct focus groups with 42 boys ages 12 to 14. Boys use games to experience fantasies of power and fame, to explore and master what they perceive as exciting and realistic environments (but distinct from real life), to work through angry feelings or relieve stress, and as social tools. Boys did not believe they had been harmed by violent games but were concerned that younger children might imitate game behavior (especially swearing).

Parents’ and boys’ opinions on video game play (Kutner et al., 2008)

Now at gamepolitics.com, Cheryl K. Olson and colleague Lawrence A. Kutner, had a book that’s going to be published in April and a lot of the commentators seem so excited over news that support their beliefs about violent video game effects. Well, I’m not really excited, just interested to hear what she and her colleagues has to say about the violent media research. You can read some excerpts from their website at grandtheftchildhood.com. By the way, I commented that I read her papers, it turns out to be the wrong person, it was Sheryl L. Olson. Well, they sound similar, so it’s a normal and understandable mistake.

Abstract

Public policy efforts to restrict children’s access to electronic games with violent or sexual content are often predicated on assumptions about parental concerns. As an initial step in determining whether those assumptions are accurate, the authors conduct focus groups of 21 adolescent boys and 21 of their parents or guardians to explore parents’ concerns, compare parents’ and children’s perceptions, and see whether these are consistent with the focus of proposed legislation and other public policy efforts. Parents’ primary concern is that games not interfere with their children’s schoolwork, social skills, and exercise. They worry about exposure to violent content, but definitions of and opinions about what is harmful vary and may not match proposed public policies.

Factors correlated with violent video games use by teenage boys and girls (Olson et al., 2007)

Now at gamepolitics.com, Cheryl K. Olson and colleague Lawrence A. Kutner, had a book that’s going to be published in April and a lot of the commentators seem so excited over news that support their beliefs about violent video game effects. Well, I’m not really excited, just interested to hear what she and her colleagues has to say about the violent media research. You can read some excerpts from their website at grandtheftchildhood.com. By the way, I commented that I read her papers, it turns out to be the wrong person, it was Sheryl L. Olson. Well, they sound similar, so it’s a normal and understandable mistake.

Abstract

Purpose: To compare the video and computer game play patterns of young adolescent boys and girls, including factors correlated with playing violent games.

Methods: Data collected in November/December, 2004 from children in grades 7 and 8 at two demographically diverse schools in Pennsylvania and South Carolina, using a detailed written self-reported survey.

Results: Of 1254 participants (53% female, 47% male), only 80 reported playing no electronic games in the previous 6 months. Of 1126 children who listed frequently played game titles, almost half (48.8%) played at least one violent (mature-rated) game regularly (67.9% of boys and 29.2% of girls). One third of boys and 10.7% of girls play games nearly every day; only 1 in 20 plays often or always with a parent. Playing M-rated games is positively correlated (p < .001) with being male, frequent game play, playing with strangers over the Internet, having a game system and computer in one’s bedroom, and using games to manage anger.

Conclusions: Most young adolescent boys and many girls routinely play M-rated games. Implications for identifying atypical and potentially harmful patterns of electronic game use are discussed, as well as the need for greater media literacy among parents.

Video games and positive adolescent development (Durkin & Barber, 2002)

It’s a bit old, but since people have been talking about negative effects of video games on children, I thought getting some positive might cheer people and gamers up.

Abstract

It has been speculated that computer game play by young people has negative correlates or consequences, although little evidence has emerged to support these fears. An alternative possibility is that game play may be associated with positive features of development, as the games reflect and contribute to participation in a challenging and stimulating voluntary leisure environment. This study examined the relationship between game play and several measures of adjustment or risk taking in a sample of 1,304 16-year-old high school students. No evidence was obtained of negative outcomes among game players. On several measures–including family closeness, activity involvement, positive school engagement, positive mental health, substance use, self-concept, friendship network, and disobedience to parents–game players scored more favorably than did peers who never played computer games. It is concluded that computer games can be a positive feature of a healthy adolescence. 

 

Social evaluations of stereotypes in video games (Brenick et al., 2007)

Gamepolitics.com featured a Fox News show called Live Desk where they talked about the sexual scenes in Mass Effect. What got my attention is the study that Cooper Lawrence had mentioned.

“Darling, I gotta go with the research. And the research says there’s a new study out of the University of Maryland right now that says that boys that play video games cannot tell the difference between what they’re seeing in the video game and the real world…”

So, I went googling and sent e-mails to Cooper Lawrence (actually to her show’s e-mail) and to Dr. Melanie Killen at the University of Maryland whom she’s the closest match to Lawrence’s descriptions. Dr.Killen responded that it sounds like that Lawrence is referring to one of her study (which I’m going to talk about later), but she wasn’t sure. I’m not sure either, starting from the article’s title. Perhaps, a case of exaggeration? No response yet from Cooper Lawrence, but then I think my e-mail wasn’t comprehensible, had severe stomaches. So, here’s the closest article, unfortunately it’s 25 pages long and I’ve got lots of lab work to do…

Until Cooper Lawrence confirm that this is indeed the study she referred to, there’s little point in analyzing to counter her arguments. The reasons are that her statement might be interpreted in many ways or that she might confused. One possibility is that Mrs. Lawrence might be referring to the death cases of MMO addicts.

 Update (25/01/08): I googled around to get some more info and there’s seems to be some confusion over this journal article, some blogs ( like this one at destructoid) had made some references to news article (1), (2). Apparently, they are all talking about the same study which it was presented in conferences years ago, but is recently published in an academic journal. (A little insight: studies don’t get published right away until the reviewers and editors are satisfied, this could take between 1 month to who knows. And distinguished journals like Nature, have very strict quality control.)

 Update (31/01/08): an MTV article about Cooper Lawrence following the Mass Effects sex scenes had made a direct reference to the journal article that I had suspected. HOWEVER, it is still not clear whether Cooper Lawrence provided the reference or not. In any case, I decided to write my ’summary’ of the study. However, I advise anyone to read the journal article itself, if possible.

Abstract

The aim of this study is to assess late adolescents’ evaluations of and reasoning about gender stereotypes in video games. Female (n = 46) and male (n = 41) students, predominantly European American, with a mean age 19 years, are interviewed about their knowledge of game usage, awareness and evaluation of stereotypes, beliefs about the influences of games on the players, and authority jurisdiction over three different types of games: games with negative male stereotypes, games with negative female stereotypes, and gender-neutral games. Gender differences are found for how participants evaluated these games. Males are more likely than females to find stereotypes acceptable. Results are discussed in terms of social reasoning, video game playing, and gender differences.  

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.

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.