Videogame Addiction and its Treatment

For many, the concept of videogame addiction seems far-fetched, particularly if their concepts and definitions of addiction involve the taking of drugs. This paper overviews the small, but growing area of videogame addiction and then examines the treatment options available for those affected by excessive videogame playing. An overview of the available empirical literature appears to indicate that adverse effects are likely to affect only a relatively small subgroup of players and that frequent players are the most at-risk for developing problems. Worldwide, there are relatively few practitioners that specialise in the treatment of videogame addiction and this may be because there are so few players who are genuinely addicted to playing videogames. However, the Internet may be facilitating excessive online game playing as evidenced by the increasing number of specialist addiction treatment clinics for online videogame addiction. This paper overviews the various approaches that have been used as an intervention in treating videogame addicts, including online support groups, 12-step programmes, behavioural and cognitive-behavioural therapies, and motivational interviewing.     

Reviews: Books, Art

YOGA AND PSYCHOLOGY. By Howard Coward. 115 pp. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. $16.95. CASE STUDIES IN INFANT MENTAL HEALTH: RISK, RESILIENCY AND RELATIONSHIPS. Edited by Joan J. Shirilla and Deborah J. Weatherston. 203 pp. Washington, D.C.: Zero to Three, 2002. $32.95. JACOB'S SHADOW: CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES ON MASCULINITY. By Herbert Anderson. 173 pp. Louisville, KY: Bridge Resources, 2002. $18.95. LEONARDO DA VINCI. By Sherwin B. Nuland. 170 pp. New York: Viking, 2002. $19.95. FAITH AND THE PLACEBO EFFECT: AN ARGUMENT FOR SELF-HEALING. By Lolette Kuby. 323 pp. Novato, CA: Origin Press, 2001. $23.00. NOTHING PERSONAL, JUST BUSINESS: A GUIDED JOURNEY INTO ORGANIZATIONAL DARKNESS. By Howard F. Stein. Westport, CT: Quorum/Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. FAITH BEYOND FAITH HEALING: FINDING HOPE AFTER SHATTERED DREAMS. By Kimberly Winston. 115 pp. Brewster, MA: Praraclete Press, 2002. A SHADOW OF GLORY: READING THE NEW TESTAMENT AFTER THE HOLOCAUST. Edited by Tod Linafelt. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. LOVE IS STRONGER THAN DEATH: THE MYSTICAL UNION OF TWO SOULS. By Cynthia Bourgeault. 222 pp. Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 2001. $14.95. Moving Pictures     

Origen and Gregory of Nyssa on The Lord's Prayer

The aim of this article is twofold. Both Origen and Gregory of Nyssa treat of the Lord's Prayer, the former in his own treatise On Prayer , the latter in the course of five sermons on the same prayer. By means of an analysis of the methods of both writers and of the results at which they arrive I hope to illustrate their respective treatments of the same text and so to show how what began life as an eschatological prayer became in the course of three or four centuries something rather different. A major difficulty faced by both writers is how to understand the coming of the kingdom, if it is already there.
My second intention, beyond that of comparison is to assess what influence, if any, was exercised by Origen on Gregory. The answer arrived at is rather disappointing, above all for those who believe in a strong influence on Gregory of his predecessor, by way of his grandmother, Macrina. Not only are the styles of the two men quite different, but also, apart from a sort of common Platonism, their answers are often quite distinct.     

Training and transfer effects in task switching

Performance on task switching, a paradigm commonly used to measure executive function, has been shown to improve with practice. However, no study has tested whether these benefits are specific to the tasks learned or are transferable to new situations. We report evidence of transferable improvement in a cued, randomly switching paradigm as measured by mixing cost, but we report no consistent improvement for switch cost. Improvement in mixing costs arises from a relative reduction in time to perform both switch and nonswitch trials that immediately follow switch trials, implicating the ability to recover from unexpected switches as the source of improvement. These results add to a growing number of studies demonstrating generalizable improvement with training on executive processing.     

Segmenting dynamic human action via statistical structure

Human social, cognitive, and linguistic functioning depends on skills for rapidly processing action. Identifying distinct acts within the dynamic motion flow is one basic component of action processing; for example, skill at segmenting action is foundational to action categorization, verb learning, and comprehension of novel action sequences. Yet little is currently known about mechanisms that may subserve action segmentation. The present research documents that adults can register statistical regularities providing clues to action segmentation. This finding provides new evidence that structural knowledge gained by mechanisms such as statistical learning can play a role in action segmentation, and highlights a striking parallel between processing of action and processing in other domains, such as language.     

A parent intervention with a growth mindset approach improves children's early gesture and vocabulary development

Socioeconomic disparities in children's early vocabulary skills can be traced back to disparities in gesture use at age one and are due, in part, to the quantity and quality of communication children are exposed to by parents. Further, parents' mindsets about intelligence contribute to their interactions with their children. We implemented a parent gesture intervention with a growth mindset component with 47 parents of 10‐month‐olds to determine whether this approach would increase parents' use of the pointing gesture, infants' use of pointing, and child vocabulary growth. The intervention had an effect on parent gesture such that by child age 12‐months, parents who received the intervention increased in their pointing more than parents in the control condition. Importantly, the intervention also had a significant effect on child gesture use with parents. There was no main effect of the intervention on child vocabulary. Further, the effect of the intervention on pointing was stronger for parents who endorsed fixed mindsets at baseline, and had an added benefit of increased vocabulary growth from 10–18 months for children of those parents who endorsed fixed mindsets. Incorporating growth mindset approaches into parenting interventions is encouraged.     

Counseling Intimate Partner Abuse Survivors: Effective and Ineffective Interventions

This study obtained feedback from intimate partner abuse survivors (N = 104) regarding helpful and unhelpful aspects of therapy. The survivors’ narrative accounts and answers to quantitative questions were subjected to quantitative and qualitative analysis. Results suggest that survivors sought therapy to understand themselves and the abuse they endured. Clinicians’ diagnoses of codependency or assertions that survivors chose the relationship weakened the therapeutic alliance and reduced the perceived helpfulness of therapy.     

The structure of social relationships among captive female giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis)

Giraffe herds have been characterized as random associations of individuals, but recent evidence suggests giraffe have a more complex social structure. The authors formulated 3 hypotheses designed to evaluate whether a herd of captive giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) associated randomly or patterned their behavior and proximity in a manner indicative of social relationships. Affiliative interaction, proximity, and nearest neighbors for 6 captive female giraffe living in a large outdoor enclosure were analyzed, and all three measures were nonrandomly distributed, indicating female giraffe had social preferences. Furthermore, preferences were consistent across measures and time, suggesting that adult female giraffe maintain relationships. Mother-daughter pairs and pairs with large age differences between members interacted and associated most often. The social structure of this captive herd is influenced by social relationships between individual adult females, and the social behavior of individual females should be examined more closely in the wild.     

Assessing obsessive compulsive symptoms and cognitions on the internet: evidence for the comparability of paper and Internet administration

Administration of psychological questionnaires via the Internet has gained popularity in recent years and touts many advantages. However, before questionnaires that were originally developed as paper-and-pencil measures can be confidently administered over the Internet, it is necessary to document the equivalence of the paper and computer-generated versions [American Psychological Association. (1986). Guidelines for computer-based tests and interpretations. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; Cohen, R.J., Swerdlik, M.E., & Smith, D.K. (1992). Psychological testing and assessment (2nd ed.). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing; Cronbach, L.J. (1990). Essentials in psychological testing (5th ed.). New York: Harper Collins; Meier, S. (1994). The chronic crisis in psychological measurement and assessment: A historical survey. San Diego: Academic Press; Schulenberg, S.E., & Yutrzenka, B.A. (2001). Equivalence of computerized and conventional versions of the Beck Depression Inventory- II (BDI-II). Current Psychology: Developmental, Learning, Personality, Social, 20, 216-230]. The current study tested this equivalence for the Obsessive Compulsive Inventory [Foa, E.B., Kozak, M.J., Salkovskis, P.M, Coles, M.E., & Amir, N. (1998). The validation of a new obsessive compulsive disorder scale: The obsessive-compulsive inventory. Psychological Assessment, 10(3), 206-214] and the Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire-44 [Obsessive Compulsive Cognitions Working Group. (2005). Psychometric validation of the obsessive belief questionnaire and interpretation of intrusions inventory-Part 2: Factor analyses and testing of a brief version. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 43, 1527-1543] in an unselected student sample. Study results support the equivalence of these measures of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms and beliefs independent of administration method (paper versus secure project website). These findings create new opportunities for conducting OCD-related research online.