294 research outputs found

    Elements of a theory of social competence : socio-cognitive and behavioral contributions in typical development

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    L’ĂȘtre humain Ă©volue quotidiennement au cƓur d’un monde social hautement complexe auquel il est singuliĂšrement adaptĂ© d’un point de vue Ă©volutif. L’individu qui navigue de façon adĂ©quate, parmi les situations et les interactions sociales, y parvient grĂące Ă  une machinerie cognitive sophistiquĂ©e et spĂ©cialisĂ©e connue sous le terme de « cognition sociale », composĂ©e d’un ensemble de fonctions acquises durant le dĂ©veloppement et permettant la perception, le traitement, l’interprĂ©tation et la rĂ©action Ă  des stimuli sociaux dynamiques et nuancĂ©s. Le dĂ©veloppement social serait sous-tendu par le fonctionnement cognitif global (p. ex. le fonctionnement intellectuel, le langage, la mĂ©moire, l’attention, les habiletĂ©s visuoperceptuelles), ainsi que par des habiletĂ©s sociocognitives spĂ©cifiques (p. ex. la thĂ©orie de l’esprit, l’empathie, la reconnaissance des Ă©motions faciales, la prise de perspective, l’attribution d’intentions, le raisonnement moral), le tout assurĂ© par un ensemble de structures et rĂ©seaux neuronaux connu sous le terme « cerveau social ». MalgrĂ© les connaissances empiriques suggĂ©rant une association entre les facteurs neuronaux, cognitifs et environnementaux du dĂ©veloppement social, notre comprĂ©hension des interactions dynamiques et complexes entre les habiletĂ©s sociocognitives, l’influence externe de facteurs environnementaux, ainsi que leurs impacts individuels et combinĂ©s sur le dĂ©veloppement social typique demeure prĂ©liminaire. L’objectif gĂ©nĂ©ral de cette thĂšse Ă©tait d’étudier deux corrĂ©lats principaux qui sous-tendent la compĂ©tence sociale durant le dĂ©veloppement, soient la cognition sociale et le comportement social. Le modĂšle SOCIAL (Beauchamp & Anderson, 2010) est utilisĂ© comme cadre thĂ©orique et empirique pour explorer de multiples facettes du dĂ©veloppement de la compĂ©tence sociale et des liens entre les habiletĂ©s sociocognitives (p.ex. le raisonnement moral et la prise de perspective) et le comportement social global. La premiĂšre Ă©tude explore la contribution des aspects cognitifs (thĂ©orie de l’esprit) et affectifs (empathie) de la prise de perspective au raisonnement moral et au comportement social des enfants et des adolescents neurotypiques. Un outil novateur d’évaluation du raisonnement moral, le Socio-Moral Reasoning Aptitude Level (So-Moral), fut utilisĂ© pour rehausser la valeur Ă©cologique du construit. Ainsi, des dilemmes sociomoraux quotidiens ont Ă©tĂ© prĂ©sentĂ©s aux participants, qui ont Ă©galement complĂ©tĂ© des mesures de thĂ©orie de l’esprit, d’empathie, et de comportement social. Les rĂ©sultats suggĂšrent que les aspects cognitifs (thĂ©orie de l’esprit) et affectifs (empathie) de la prise de perspective contribuent conjointement Ă  prĂ©dire la maturitĂ© morale chez les enfants, mais pas chez les adolescents. Par ailleurs, certaines lacunes au plan du raisonnement moral seraient associĂ©es Ă  des instances plus frĂ©quentes de comportements externalisĂ©s, mais aucun lien entre la maturitĂ© morale et les comportements prosociaux n’a Ă©tĂ© dĂ©tectĂ©. La thĂ©orie de l’esprit contribuerait de maniĂšre significative Ă  la maturitĂ© du raisonnement moral chez les enfants, suggĂ©rant l’importance d’une Ă©valuation cognitive d’une situation sociomorale. Comme les facteurs prĂ©dictifs du raisonnement moral diffĂ©reraient chez les enfants et les adolescents, il est possible que des mĂ©canismes sous-jacents distincts soient impliquĂ©s. La deuxiĂšme Ă©tude documente l’association entre les facteurs externes, tels qu’opĂ©rationnalisĂ©s par le temps hebdomadaire passĂ© Ă  jouer Ă  des jeux vidĂ©o, et le comportement social. Cette Ă©tude vise Ă©galement Ă  comprendre les liens entre l’usage des jeux vidĂ©o, la cognition sociale et l’adaptation sociale chez des enfants du primaire. L’étude rĂ©vĂšle que les enfants qui passent moins de temps Ă  jouer Ă  des jeux vidĂ©o par semaine tendent Ă  exhiber plus de comportements prosociaux. Toutefois, aucun lien n’a Ă©tĂ© identifiĂ© entre la frĂ©quence d’usage de jeux vidĂ©o et les comportements mĂ©sadaptĂ©s. Il est donc possible que les interactions sociales complexes, rĂ©elles et face-Ă -face soient particuliĂšrement importantes au dĂ©veloppement des compĂ©tences sociales chez les enfants. De façon globale, les donnĂ©es de la thĂšse contribuent Ă  Ă©tablir un portrait plus complet des relations complexes et dynamiques entre la cognition sociale, les expĂ©riences sociales et le comportement social lors du dĂ©veloppement typique. Les rĂ©sultats offrent des pistes novatrices quant Ă  l’approfondissement des connaissances thĂ©oriques, empiriques et cliniques au sujet du dĂ©veloppement social, et fournissent des fondements empiriques pour soutenir l’élaboration de programmes d’intervention et d’outils d’évaluation de la cognition et de la compĂ©tence sociale.Humans are characterized by species-specific social skills and interactions, which direct much of their behaviors, dictate thought processes and form the foundations of human consciousness and reality. These social abilities are highly complex and intricate, involving a large range of developmentally acquired skills allowing the perception, processing, interpretation and response to dynamic social stimuli. The fine-tuning of these diverse abilities across the lifespan contributes to an individual’s social competence, allowing the navigation of the social world. Smooth and adaptive social development is supported by core cognitive functions (e.g. intellectual ability, language, memory, attention, visual-perceptive skills), as well as by specific skills (e.g. theory of mind, empathy, emotion recognition, perspective taking, intent attribution, moral reasoning) referred to under the umbrella of “social cognition” and subsumed by neural structures and networks of the “social brain”. Despite strong evidence supporting the associations between neural, cognitive and social functioning, much remains to be learned about the interplay between socio-cognitive abilities during development, the external influence of environmental factors, as well as their individual and additive impact on social behavior. The main objective of this dissertation was to study two manifestations of social competence in typical development, namely, social cognition and social behavior. The SOCIAL model (Beauchamp & Anderson, 2010) is used as the theoretical and empirical framework providing fertile ground for the investigation of multiple facets of the development of social competence and a better understanding of the global interplay of socio-cognitive skills (e.g., moral reasoning and perspective taking) and social behavior more broadly. The first study explores the contribution of cognitive (theory of mind) and affective (empathy) aspects of perspective taking to moral reasoning and social behavior in typically developing children and adolescents. An innovative neuropsychological tool for assessing moral reasoning, the Socio-Moral Reasoning Aptitude Level (So-Moral), was used to enhance the ecological value of the construct. Everyday socio-moral reasoning dilemmas were presented to children and adolescents to evaluate their moral maturity, and assessments of theory of mind, empathy and social behavior were also completed. Jointly, both aspects of perspective taking (theory of mind and empathy) predicted moral reasoning maturity in children, but not in adolescents. Poorer moral reasoning skills were associated with more externalizing behavior problems across the age span, but no associations were found with respect to prosocial behavior. Theory of mind skills were independent predictors of moral reasoning, suggesting that a cognitive understanding of the situation may be especially useful when children are asked to reason about a moral conflict. Contributing factors to moral reasoning differed in children and adolescents, suggesting differential underlying mechanisms. The second study investigates the contribution of external influences, as operationalized by time spent playing video games, to social behavior. A secondary objective was to add to the growing body of literature exploring associations between video game playing, social cognition and social behavior, in an age group less frequently focused on (elementary school-aged children). The main results of the study indicate that children who spend less time per week playing video games have greater prosocial tendencies, but no association was found with behavior problems. Findings highlight the possibility that real-life, complex, and nuanced social interactions outside screen-based play may be central to fostering social competence skills in children. Overall, the results of the studies presented in this dissertation contribute to building a more comprehensive picture of the complex interplay between social cognition, social experience and social competence during typical development. Findings offer new avenues for improving theoretical, empirical and clinical knowledge of social development and provide an empirical basis for the development of social skills intervention programs as well as social cognition assessment tools

    The Effect of Gender on Aggressive and Prosocial Behavior with Gaming Technology

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    The relationship between different types of video games and male and female adolescent behavior has been widely speculated in the recent past. Research has suggested that violent video games may increase aggressive behavior, and prosocial video games may enhance altruistic behavior (Willoughby, Adachi & Good, 2012; Greitemeyer, Osswald, & Brauer, 2010). Bartholow and Anderson (2002) suggested that men may be more influenced by violent video games than women. Interestingly, past research on prosocial video games has not found any gender differences (Gentile et al, 2009). The current study examined the effect of gender on aggressive and prosocial behavior in relation to gaming technology. Participants were given the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire and Self-Report Altruism Scale and randomly assigned to one of the following three games: Monster Shooter 2: Back to Earth, Ants: Mission of Salvation or Super Monkey Ball 2. After playing the designated game, participants engaged in a Prisoner’s Dilemma task in order to determine the game’s influence on their competitive or cooperative behaviors. A total of forty undergraduate students at Trinity College participated in this research. It was hypothesized that students assigned to Monster Shooter 2: Back to Earth would display more aggressive behavior in the Prisoner’s Dilemma task and students assigned to Ants: Mission of Salvation would exhibit more prosocial behavior in the task. I predicted that men would generally display more aggression than women in the Prisoner’s Dilemma task, and specifically that men would be more aggressive than women after aggressive game exposure. Additionally, I predicted that there would be no gender difference after altruistic game exposure. Results indicated that exposure to one of the three games did not influence subsequent behavior. Moreover, regardless of game exposure, there were no significant gender differences in behavior in the task. Lastly, there were no significant gender differences in the aggressive game condition or the prosocial game condition

    Playing the Game, or Not: Reframing Understandings of Children’s Digital Play

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    Everybody seems to have an opinion about the value, risks and opportunities of children playing digital games. Popular media conveys messages to parents and the public alike of addicted, violent, desensitised, and anti-social children and of the privacy risk of back end data collection. Educationalists waver between seeing digital games as hindering more positive educational, social and physical activity, or as being a new way to engage students and improve learning outcomes. Parents are in fear of the ‘dangers’ of gaming and screen time yet enticed by the educational promise and the entertainment value of keeping their children occupied. Game developers see opportunities for data collection, surveillance and for nudging children’s behaviour and purchases. Many of these fears, hopes, and hype are replaying older tropes that circulate around any new technology, media forms and associated changes in practices, but are amplified further by having children as their central focus. Indeed, all of these stakeholders in children’s futures have particular understandings of what is good for children and what an ideal child should be. Yet children are not docile bodies who simply have things happen to them: they subvert, appropriate and innovate. This paper is a call for an exploration of what and how children’s digital gaming looks like from a child’s perspective and for a reframing of understanding children’s digital play as a result

    Play Together: How Watching the Cooperative Play of Violent Video Games Can Positively Influence Dyadic Relationships

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    Media effects research has shown that video games can have both antisocial and prosocial effects, depending on the content of the game. Individuals who play violent video games tend to display more aggressive attitudes and behaviors, while those who play games with prosocial content tend to display more prosocial, or helping, attitudes and behavior. The context in which a video game is played has also been shown to influence media effects, with competitive play leading to increased aggression while cooperative play leads to increased prosociality. However, the existing literature has not examined how these effects might influence the interpersonal relationships between those playing the video game. To test the effects of gaming context on interpersonal relationships, an experiment was conducted that compared two groups of participants exposed to two levels (competitive or cooperative) of a single factor (gaming context). In the competitive condition, participants watched gameplay footage of two individuals playing a video game competitively, while those in the cooperative condition watched gameplay footage of two individuals playing the same game cooperatively. After exposure, five dependent variables were examined to see how they differed between the two groups: state hostility, prosocial score, positive affect change, negative affect change, and change in perceived relationship quality. iii Upon initial analysis, only negative affect change was shown to significantly differ between the two conditions. However, this effect was actually due to an interaction between condition and sex. This study also identified that sex, personality, and media usage habits significantly covaried to some degree with all five dependent variables. These covariates provide evidence for how individual differences might influence the effects that result from watching a video game being played in different multiplayer contexts and, as an extension, how individual differences might influence the effects of gaming context in general

    Empathy in Video Games and Other Media

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    Within this body of research, the current thesis demonstrates that a) inducing empathy before playing a violent video game can have both expected and contradictory effects and that b) a scale of media-based empathy facilitates and revises the measurement of empathy in the media context. Consuming violent media is neither a sufficient nor a necessary factor to explain violent behavior in media users. Instead, it is only one factor among others. However, this thesis claimed to consider empathy not only as a conditional pertinent protective factor when using media (i.e., empathy induction; Manuscript #1 & #2), but also as a general disposition in users (i.e., MBE; Manuscript #3). Contrary to suggestions by other research groups (e.g., Mar, Oatley, & Peterson, 2009), individual differences in media-based empathy may indeed be responsible for empathic reactions to fictional media use. The general pattern of relationships suggests, that even though similar to traditional empathy, MBE is a unique trait variable and reflects independent components of empathy (e.g., immersion in video games). Based on our current understanding, MBE examines a yet underappreciated personality trait in media users and thereby contributes to the research of media use and media effects. Moreover, empathy with a media protagonist is no longer only considered a determinant of the entertainment experience (see Ritterfeld & Jin, 2006; Zillmann, 1991). Instead, a short, modest text- or clip-based empathy induction before game play can influence the effects of playing video games. While this approach has been tested for other factors before (e.g., activated self; Jin, 2011), this thesis explores the impact of experimentally induced empathy in the video game context for the first-time. In other words, focusing on the own character or adding emotional content to the storyline of a video game via pregame narratives can both ameliorate and enhance the deleterious effects of violent video games on prosocial and antisocial behavior. These findings stress the relevance of focusing not only on the content but also on situational and personality factors in users (e.g., MBE; see Gentile & Bushman, 2012) as well as interacting content factors (e.g., empathic storyline for a violent villain character; see Gentile, 2011) when exploring media effects. Even though the findings reported in this dissertation can be theoretically integrated into the structure of the General Aggression Model (GAM; Anderson & Bushman, 2002a), the results are better understood within the newly developed Differential Susceptibility to Media use Model (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013). As mentioned above, our findings regarding state empathy and trait MBE perfectly fit into this model as this modelÂŽs central focus is susceptibility factors like the ones identified in the present research. Testing the DSMM model in comparison to other more established theoretical models of media effects is a task for future studies. The appropriateness of applying theoretical frameworks of traditional empathy to empathy in the media context is debatable and should be tested in the future. The results presented in this thesis underline the importance of conceptually separating both constructs. In the media context, the available information, the target, and the form of interaction differ (e.g., Barrett-Lennard, 1993). Media interactions are frequently idealized and empathy is therefore felt more easily (see Westermann, Spies, Stahl & Hesse, 1996). Furthermore, the media user needs imagination, as the characters may be fictional and the available information in the media is regularly presented only in excerpts (see Mar & Oatley, 2008). Batson (2009) advocated eight equally legitimated interpretations of the term empathy in the real world context. As this confusion regarding the term empathy and its interpretation and measurement has not yet been fully solved for traditional empathy, this complexity is expected to be even larger in the media context, due to all potential empathic interactions between real and fictional people in real or fictional contexts. Nonetheless this dissertation broadens the horizon of potential moderators in media effects research. The important question how a specific media user reacts upon specific media content can be predicted more precisely when exploring the empathic potential of the media content and the media-based empathy in the user

    Female gaming, gaming addiction, and the role of women within gaming culture

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    Research investigating female gaming has begun to emerge despite gaming being traditionally more popular with males. Research in the 21st century has drawn attention to the role of women in culture, society, and technology, and female gaming is one of the growing phenomena not to have been researched in depth. The aim of the present paper was to review female gaming (i.e., the role of females within video game culture) and identify any associated psychopathological symptomatology. The review adapted the Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research (SPIDER) model in conducting a narrative literature review. A search of three scientific electronic databases yielded 49 papers for further evaluation. From a methodological perspective, studies had to fulfill the following criteria to be included: i) published between the years 2000 and 2018; ii) assessed female gaming or the female position within gaming culture, iii) contained quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods approaches to produce empirical data or discuss theoretical implications through reviews, iv) be retrievable as a full-text peer-reviewed journal paper, and v) published in English, German, Polish, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, or French. Four categories emerged from the papers: i) the benefits of female gaming, ii) why women might play video games less than men, iii) perceptions and realities of female characters within video games, and iv) women’s position in gaming culture. The main findings showed playing video games has benefits for women in terms of enhancing cognitive, social, and physical abilities. However, they are less encouraged to play video games due to negative expectations based on gender and/or experiences during game play. Video games are associated with stereotypical male characteristics, such as being overly aggressive, and frequently contain sexualized content. Female gamers appear to require coping strategies to handle online harassment. Females look for different things in video games, which are not often included in game designs thereby limiting their abilities. For instance, female avatar representation—which is exaggerated and hypersexualized—can prompt social comparisons and lead to feelings of decreased self-esteem, depression, and other impacts on well-being. Overall, there are still obstacles for women playing video games even though they comprise half of the gaming population

    Violent Video Game Playing, Moral Reasoning, and Attitudes Towards Violence in Adolescents: Is There a Connection?

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    In this study of 109 adolescents from the eighth grade of seven public elementary schools in Ontario, the relationship among adolescents’ violent video game playing patterns, habits and attitudes, their levels of moral reasoning, and their attitudes towards violence in real life was investigated. In addition, gender differences were addressed. The mixed-methodology was employed combining qualitative and quantitative data. The research results confirmed that playing video games in general is a very popular activity among those adolescents. Significant negative relationship was found between adolescents’ amount of time playing violent video games during the day and their scores on The Sociomoral Reflection Measure. Significant difference was also found between adolescents who play violent video games and those who do not play violent video games on their scores on The Attitudes Towards Violence Scale. Boys and girls significantly differed in the amount of playing video games during the day, the reasons for playing video games, their favourite video game choices, and their favourite video game character choices. Boys and girls also significantly differed on their choices of personality traits of selected video game characters, the identification with video game characters, and their mood experiences while playing video games. The findings are put into the educational context and the context of normal development, and suggestions are given for parents, for educators, and for future violent video game research

    To What Extent is Social Media Use Related to Online Prosocial Behavior Among Adolescents?

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