Gen X and Digital Games: Looking back to look forward

Despite there being increased attention in recent years to older adults who actively play digital games, it seems that there has been comparatively minimal scholarly focus on the next generation of older adult gamers – Generation X gamers. Although there have been few, current audience studies that examine this population within a gaming context, a temporal perspective reveals another story. Older members of this generation were the first age cohort to be exposed to and engage in video gameplay at an early age (i.e., childhood). With the emerging popularity of video games in the 1980s, this did not escape the attention of scholars. This study provides an overview of those early studies that assessed video game use and its potential (for better or worse) among the older members Gen X. The study themes identified include: health, education, and behavior. In addition, the first studies that identified gaming characteristics of this generation in their formative years emerged in the latter half of that decade. By identifying themes in these early studies, scholars have the potential to track an entire generation’s gaming history and characteristics from childhood to present day. Ultimately, this may glean richer insight into those qualities when they become the next older generation of digital game players

Teaching complex social skills to children with autism; advances of video modeling

Although there has been a corresponding explosion of literature regarding the treatment of the social deficits in autism, the establishment of more complex social behaviors still remains a challenge. Video modeling appears as one approach to have the potential to successfully address this challenge. Following an introduction to modeling that constitutes the basis of this procedure, the current paper explores those video modeling studies that have targeted the promotion of complex social skills. It is suggested that this approach could be an effective addition to peer-mediated treatment procedures, especially for children with autism who cannot always be in environments where peers are present. Further, the likely success of video modeling seems to be dependent upon the prior elimination of behaviors that interfere with the development of imitation skills

The Right to Play

This issue of Early Childhood in Focus is published to coincide with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child's General Comment No. 17 which aims to strengthen implementation of children's right to rest, leisure, play and recreational activities (as set out in UNCRC, 1989, Article 31). 'The Right to Play' offers short summaries of theory, research and policy issues that can inform the implementation of Article 31. Section 1 is about the concept of play, the ways culture defines play in children's lives, the role of play within early childhood pedagogy and children's own views on play. Section 2 looks more closely at the function of play in supporting children's development, including social, emotional and cognitive benefits. Section 3 is about the opportunities and challenges for realizing children's right to play, including the pressures of early schooling as well as child work, and the implications of commercialization and the growing place of new technologies in young children's lives

Back to where we came from: evolutionary psychology and children’s literature and media

In 2010, The New York Times ran an article which announced that ‘the next big thing in English [Studies]’ was ‘using evolutionary theory to explain fiction’. This announcement may be considered somewhat belated, given that the interest in the potential relevance of evolutionary psychology to literary studies might be traced back to a considerably earlier date than 2010. Joseph Carroll first published on the subject as far back as 1995, and by 2002 Steven Pinker could claim that ‘within the academy, a growing number of mavericks are looking to Evolutionary psychology and cognitive science in an effort to re-establish human nature as the center of any understanding of the arts’. Nevertheless, The New York Times’s announcement may be taken as a measure of an increasingly visible trend in both popular and academic thinking. We argue in this chapter that this trend is motivated specifically by nostalgia, or the longing for a past which seems forever lost. A second aspect of this nostalgia will also be discussed to do with the way that we argue that this supposedly ‘new’ area of research repeats exactly a long history of prior claims of many eminent children’s literature critics with respect to ideas of childhood, language and children’s literature and media. Despite the repeated, insistent claims of several of the Literary Darwinists, including, for instance, Joseph Carroll, one of the founders of this way of thinking, that they are working in heroic opposition to a dominant, obscurantist and anti-science ‘literary theory’, we argue here that in fact there is a high degree of convergence between the claims made about childhood, language and children’s literature in Literary Darwinism and much children’s literature criticism. We therefore see Literary Darwinism and (children’s) literature studies as not being in any sense about an opposition or separation between science and literary or humanist studies, but about a convergence underpinned and driven by the same nostalgia for a singular, stable, uniform and universal past, leading to a singular, stable, uniform and universal present. Finally, we suggest that it is not just in these two fields in which this nostalgia operates, but that this can currently be seen in sub-streams within many disciplines – in both in arts, sciences and humanities -- as a founding, powerfully political, driver

Monkey Brains and Monkey Bars: An ecological approach to the values of school recess

Recess is a cherished part of the school day for countless children. Its value, however, has been increasingly questioned in many communities as academic performance standards and management of playground risks take precedence over play. This research examined the multiple outdoor play values held by constituents of a small, independent school for dyslexic students. Students have the choice of several recess options, including traditional playground equipment and a woodland with a stream. Ethnographic methods, including videotaped observations and interviews, were used to inquire into the values that children demonstrated through activity in their chosen play settings, as well as those expressed by their parents, teachers, school administrators and alumni. A theoretical framework of ecological psychology integrated the theory of affordances, behavior settings, and nested systems to describe the values of each group regarding outdoor play in school. Over the course of the study, most elementary students, and some middle school students, followed a longstanding pattern of selecting the woods as their preferred play setting, where they established territory and participated in practices such as creating a barter economy, foraging for human and natural artifacts (such as wood, metal, and “monkey brains”), searching for animals, constructing forts, and engaging in other forms of fun. Children selecting the playground structures (including a sport court, swings and “monkey bars”) expressed the desire for a more managed space, or for larger peer group activity. Presented as portraits of children’s encounters with their play settings, results demonstrated that the appeal of the woods setting correlated with a far greater diversity of affordances (action possibilities) than the traditional fixed play structures, as well as providing a respite from adult expectations and the opportunity to establish both personal identity and friendships in a dynamic, ongoing social setting. Adult respondents expressed commitment to the experiential learning that occurs through recess play, particularly in the woods. As schools are increasingly identified as potential havens for nurturing competent, enduring relationships with outdoor environments, this study emphasizes that the complex ecological context of schoolyard play should be considered in policy decisions affecting recess design and practice

Does chess need intelligence? – A study with young chess players

Although it is widely acknowledged that chess is the best example of an intellectual activity among games, evidence showing the association between any kind of intellectual ability and chess skill has been remarkably sparse. One of the reasons is that most of the studies investigated only one factor (e.g., intelligence), neglecting other factors relevant for the acquisition of chess skill (e.g., amount of practice, years of experience). The present study investigated the chess skill of 57 young chess players using measures of intelligence (WISC III), practice, and experience. Although practice had the most influence on chess skill, intelligence explained some variance even after the inclusion of practice. When an elite subsample of 23 children was tested, it turned out that intelligence was not a significant factor in chess skill, and that, if anything, it tended to correlate negatively with chess skill. This unexpected result is explained by a negative correlation between intelligence and practice in the elite subsample. The study demonstrates the dangers of focusing on a single factor in complex real-world situations where a number of closely interconnected factors operate

Dissociation and interpersonal autonomic physiology in psychotherapy research: an integrative view encompassing psychodynamic and neuroscience theoretical frameworks

Interpersonal autonomic physiology is an interdisciplinary research field, assessing the relational interdependence of two (or more) interacting individual both at the behavioral and psychophysiological levels. Despite its quite long tradition, only eight studies since 1955 have focused on the interaction of psychotherapy dyads, and none of them have focused on the shared processual level, assessing dynamic phenomena such as dissociation. We longitudinally observed two brief psychodynamic psychotherapies, entirely audio and video-recorded (16 sessions, weekly frequency, 45 min.). Autonomic nervous system measures were continuously collected during each session. Personality, empathy, dissociative features and clinical progress measures were collected prior and post therapy, and after each clinical session. Two-independent judges, trained psychotherapist, codified the interactions\u2019 micro-processes. Time-series based analyses were performed to assess interpersonal synchronization and de-synchronization in patient\u2019s and therapist\u2019s physiological activity. Psychophysiological synchrony revealed a clear association with empathic attunement, while desynchronization phases (range of length 30-150 sec.) showed a linkage with dissociative processes, usually associated to the patient\u2019s narrative core relational trauma. Our findings are discussed under the perspective of psychodynamic models of Stern (\u201cpresent moment\u201d), Sander, Beebe and Lachmann (dyad system model of interaction), Lanius (Trauma model), and the neuroscientific frameworks proposed by Thayer (neurovisceral integration model), and Porges (polyvagal theory). The collected data allows to attempt an integration of these theoretical approaches under the light of Complex Dynamic Systems. The rich theoretical work and the encouraging clinical results might represents a new fascinating frontier of research in psychotherapy

Identifying the task characteristics that predict children's construction task performance

Construction tasks form a major part of children’s play and can be linked to achievement in maths and science. However there is a lack of understanding of construction task ability and development. Therefore, there is little foundation for the applied use of construction tasks, such as in teaching or research, as there are no apparent methods for assessing difficulty. This empirical research identifies four construction task characteristics that impact on cognition and predict construction task difficulty in children aged 7-8 and 10-11 years and adults. The results also reveal a developmental trajectory in construction ability. The research provides a method to quantify, predict and control the complexity of construction tasks for future research and to inform applied use

Adult-Child Sexual Contact: Examining Mental Health Trainees’ Perception of the Impact on Adult Psychological-Emotional Status

Thirty-eight graduate students enrolled in mental health-related programs completed the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) indicating anticipated impact of adult-child sexual contact on the psychological status of a young adult woman from positive family environment and one from a negative family environment. BSI subscale scores were significantly higher than the BSI general population’s mean scores in both cases. Multiple regression analyses found that: in the healthy family scenario, practitioners’ background variables (parent education, family of origin climate, prior childhood sexual contact with an adult, and education) did not contribute significantly to the variance in their prediction of expectation of client’s overall psychological distress; and, in the dysfunctional family case, practitioners’ background (childhood experience with adult sexual contact, education level, and professional experience) contributed to 40% of the variance in their prediction of the client’s emotional state. Results of qualitative analyses are presented, and implications for training and service delivery discussed