| dc.description | The audiences at both conferences seemed to find the paper of interest. Although I tried to introduce why it’s important to study dreams still gaming scholars tend to have a hard time getting their head around the idea due to the attitudes that still prevail in western society that dreams are silly. The research is clear that they are central to our memory and information processing capabilities. In any case, I followed this introduction with a summary of the three major areas of inquiry we have been pursuing in our laboratory; cognition, bizarreness and nightmares. Questions at the Games for Health meeting were very useful as they offered suggestions for future research like looking at sleep transition mention and lag time to fall asleep. The questions at the Canadian Game Studies Association tended to be more about the nature of dreams themselves as well as about what type of game might provide which type of dream. I am often asked that question but the data does not reduce so simply.
At the second conference I was able to meet with two colleagues who happen to live in Montreal who are both experts in nightmares. My current research project at AU with Evelyn Ellerman is testing the hypothesis that gaming of some types might act as nightmare protection. Thus the opportunity to talk with these two nightmare experts about my research program was invaluable. They made several insightful suggestions that I will pursue. For instance, they questioned the assumption of a difference between nightmares and bad dreams which I had been pursuing (i.e., to be fair it’s a hot topic in the literature). They also helped me to formulate why gaming might serve as rehearsal for defending oneself in a nightmare.
Finally, an article about my research and this new research project based on an interview with LiveScience.com with Jeremy Hsu appeared Monday, May 25, 2010 at http://www.livescience.com/culture/video-games-control-dreams-100525.html. It was picked up by several gaming web sites and we have gotten various gaming soldiers to participate in our research by emailing me. | en |
| dc.description.abstract | In a series of studies Gackenbach and colleagues have been investigating the relationship between video game play and dreams. It is increasingly apparent that nighttime dreams are crucial to memory consolidation, information processing and emotional regulation. Thus anything that affects these fundamental processes is important to examine. Three lines of inquiry have been pursued, cognitive factors, emotional content and bizarreness in dreams associated with video game play. The question across studies has been, does hard core video game play change these fundamental qualities of dreams in the player?
Specifically our laboratory has identified a positive relationship between video game play and lucid/control dreaming in self reports from long term retrospective inquires (Gackenbach, 2006). More recently this was confirmed with dream and media information collected from college students dreams which were gathered the morning after the dream on well rested nights. Not only were lucid and control dreams associated with video game play, but also with heavier use of various types of electronic media (Gackenbach, 2009).
In another study, content analysis of hard core gamers, using a standard dream content analysis system, showed that while there were gamer/norm differences there were more similarities (Gackenbach et al, 2009). However, the differences are worth noting in that while gamers were more aggressive in their dreams than norms, when they dreamt about aggression, they tended to report fewer dreams with aggression than norms. This set of analysis was on dreams gathered from an intensive interview and thus were long term retrospections. In a follow-up study on dreams recalled from the night before (Gackenbach & Kuruvilla, 2008a), some of these findings were replicated while some were not. Of particular importance was the replication of the aggression in dreams results. These findings led to another study where the threat simulation evolutionary theory of why we dream, was tested on gamers dreams (Gackenbach & Kuruvilla, 2008b). Support was found for the notion that daytime video game play may serve the rehearsal for threat function that nighttime dreams have served. The question also arouse about the nature of nightmares in gamers, as the chase and can’t escape scenario of many nightmares clearly did not frighten gamers. Le and Gackenbach (2009) collected data comparing four types of intensified dreams including nightmares and bad dreams from high and low end gamers and found differences in emotional reactions to the two negative types of dreams. | en |
