Identification With Video Game Characters as Automatic Shift of Self-Perceptions

Two experiments tested the prediction that video game players identify with the character or role they are assigned, which leads to automatic shifts in implicit self-perceptions. Video game identification, thus, is considered as a kind of altered self-experience. In Study 1 (N = 61), participants either played a first-person shooter game or a racing game. Subsequently, they performed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) designed to detect cognitive associations between character-related concepts and players' self. Findings indicate a stronger automatic association of military-related concepts to shooter players' self and a stronger association of racing-related concepts to racing game players' self. Study 2 (N = 48) replicated the IAT result from Study 1 and demonstrated the stability of the identification pattern. Implications for identification as an element of the video game experience and future research directions are discussed.     

Associations between volume of alcohol consumption and social status, intelligence, and personality in a sample of young adult Danes

Relatively few studies have investigated associations between volume of alcohol consumption and psychological characteristics in normal samples. A sub-sample, comprising 363 men and 331 women between 29 and 34 years of age, was selected from the Copenhagen Perinatal Cohort on the basis of perinatal records. The sample was divided into four consumption categories: abstainers (including occasional drinkers), light, moderate, and risk drinkers. ANOVA and relevant contrasts were used to test the significance of differences among consumption categories. Both abstaining and risk drinking were associated with low social status family background, low education and intelligence. Abstaining was associated with low disinhibition and social recognition scores, while risk drinking was associated with high neuroticism and, in males, high disinhibition, low social recognition, and low achievement scores. Compared with light drinkers, a more "carefree" life orientation characterized male moderate drinkers, while relatively high scores on anxiety, dysthymia, and somatoform symptom scales characterized female moderate drinkers.     

MODIFICATION OF SHUTTLE BOX TO IMPROVE RATE OF AVOIDANCE LEARNING IN RATS

W allgren , H. & S avolainen , S. Modification of shuttle-box to improve rate of avoidance learning in rats. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1962, 3 , 78–80.—Acquisition by rats of a conditioned avoidance response seems to be retarded in an ordinary shuttle-box by the necessity to re-enter the compartment where shocks have previously been received. To avoid this, a four-compartment box was introduced in which the animals can proceed in one direction. Rats were given either continuous trials until nine avoidance responses were made during 10 consecutive trials, or 30 trials per day until 27 correct responses were made during one session. With both methods of training, the rate of learning was approximately 40 per cent more rapid in the four-compartment box than in the ordinary shuttle-box.     

Gender differences in patterns of emotional distress following heart transplantation

The study provides the first empirical evaluation of gender differences in psychological symptomatology and DSM-III-R major depressive disorder (MDD) across the first year following heart transplantation. An important goal was to identify physical health-related and psychosocial factors that could account for, or mediate, any association between gender and psychological distress. The sample for the present analyses was drawn from a larger cohort of 172 heart recipients and included all 28 women in the cohort plus 118 men who were matched demographically with the group of women. Detailed patient assessments were completed at 2, 7, and 12 months posttransplant. As expected, women's symptom levels were consistently higher than men's. However, while men's symptom levels in all areas declined with time posttransplant, women's distress in the area of depression initially improved but then worsened by the 12-month assessment. The distribution of episodes of MDD showed a temporal pattern of gender differences similar to that of depressive symptoms. The most important mediators of the gender-depression relationship were factors related to early posttransplant daily functional limitations: women reported more impairments in daily activities. Higher levels of such impairments, in turn, predicted subsequently higher depression levels by 12 months posttransplant. Several additional variables pertaining to transplant-related concerns and a low sense of personal mastery—while not serving as mediators—exerted their own independent effects on 12-month depression levels. The findings are relevant to the tailoring of educational and clinical interventions to the individual needs of women and men who receive heart transplants.Roberta G. Simmons, Ph.D., died on February 15, 1993, during data collection for this paper.     

On the role of causal intervention in multiple-cue judgment: positive and negative effects on learning

Previous studies have suggested better learning when people actively intervene rather than when they passively observe the stimuli in a judgment task. In 4 experiments, the authors investigated the hypothesis that this improvement is associated with a shift from exemplar memory to cue abstraction. In a multiple-cue judgment task with continuous cues, the data replicated the improvement with intervention and participants who experimented more actively produced more accurate judgments. In a multiple-cue judgment task with binary cues, intervention produced poorer accuracy and participants who experimented more actively produced poorer judgments. These results provide no support for a representational shift but suggest that the improvement with active intervention may be limited to certain tasks and environments.     

Cue abstraction and exemplar memory in categorization

In this article, the authors compare 3 generic models of the cognitive processes in a categorization task. The cue abstraction model implies abstraction in training of explicit cue-criterion relations that are mentally integrated to form a judgment, the lexicographic heuristic uses only the most valid cue, and the exemplar-based model relies on retrieval of exemplars. The results from 2 experiments showed that, in lieu of the lexicographic heuristic, most participants spontaneously integrate cues. In contrast to single-system views, exemplar memory appeared to dominate when the feedback was poor, but when the feedback was rich enough to allow the participants to discern the task structure, it was exploited for abstraction of explicit cue-criterion relations.