Video games and the perception of very long durations by adolescents

In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that adolescents might underestimate time while playing a video game. To test this hypothesis, 116 adolescents (14–15 years old) had to judge prospectively or retrospectively the duration of three consecutive tasks: a 8 min and a 24 min task of playing video game (Tetris) and an 8 min task of reading on a computer screen (control task). The main hypothesis received support: for a same duration, the video game task was estimated as shorter than the reading task. Moreover, participants with a game-inclined profile showed a stronger underestimation of time while playing. Finally, the short durations were overestimated and the long duration underestimated. The main findings are accounted for by an attention-based explanation.     

An ontology for videogame interoperability

During the last 20 years, video games have become very popular and widely adopted in our society. However, despite the growth on video game industry, there is a lack of interoperability that allow developers to interchange their information freely and to form stronger partnerships. In this paper we present the Video Game Ontology (VGO), a model for enabling interoperability among video games and enhancing data analysis of gameplay information. We describe the creation process of the ontology, the ontology conceptualization and its evaluation. In addition, we demonstrate the applicability of the Video Game Ontology in action with three example games that take advantage of the created ontology. Also, we demonstrate the use of the VGO in enabling interoperability among the example games.     

What’s your real age? an empirical analysis of identity fraud in online game

In this paper, we empirically examine the ID fraud problem in online game. We analyzed over 260,000 users’ behavior using terabytes of big data. The results of the econometrics analysis showed that the behavior pattern of group around 40 years old was very similar to that of teenagers. Considering that the game used for the analysis is a game for young users, this means that some of the users in the group around 40 years old may be teenagers who have stolen the parent’s ID. In addition, we performed discriminant analysis and log traffic analysis to estimate how many young users were using their parent IDs. As a result, about 47% of the users around 40 years old were found to be teenager users. Also, behavior patterns of users who are estimated to be teenagers have been found in other age groups.     

Video games as virtual teachers: Prosocial video game use by children and adolescents from different socioeconomic groups is associated with increased empathy and prosocial behaviour

ObjectiveThe main aim of this study was to determine if there was a positive relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour in children and adolescents.MethodThis study had a cross-sectional correlational design. Data were collected from 538 9–15 year old children and adolescents between March and December 2014. Participants completed measures of empathy, prosocial behaviour and video game habits. Teachers rated the prosocial behaviour of participants. The socioeconomic status of participants was also gathered.ResultsMultiple linear regressions were conducted on these data. Prosocial video game use was positively associated with the tendency to maintain positive affective relationships, cooperation and sharing as well as empathy. This association remained significant after controlling for gender, age, school type (disadvantaged/non-disadvantaged), socioeconomic status, weekly game play and violent video game use.ConclusionsThese findings provide evidence that prosocial video game use could develop empathic concern and improve affective relationships in a diverse population of young people.     

An exploratory study on association between Internet game contents and aggression in Korean adolescents

The debate about the influence of violent game on aggressive behaviors has been going on for decades. The current study aimed to investigate the influence of several variables, such as game use, genre of game, and age ratings of game, on aggression. 1038 students (aged 12–13) completed questionnaire included information on game and Internet use, aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Participants were grouped with information on game use for comparisons. Compared to those who did not play games, participants who used games showed a slight increase in aggressive behavior and thoughts. A similar pattern was found for game age ratings. There was no significant difference among the average scores of aggression-related variables in terms of game genre. Although the degree of the increase is not large, this study found that playing video games, especially violent video games, has increased aggressive beliefs.     

Interoperable conditional access with video selective encryption for portable devices

The pay-TV industry seeks to extend its reach to portable display devices. At the same time, it seeks to ensure a horizontal market by making interoperable the Conditional Access Systems (CASs) employed to protect content. To achieve interoperability for such devices, this paper proposes a form of selective encryption for video that allows simultaneous distribution of a small percentage of video data on a per-CAS basis, allowing sharing of the unencrypted video between the CASs. The bitrate overhead for each additional CAS enabled is found to be on average 7.41 %, whereas the computational overhead amounts to no more than 40 ms for the benchmark sequences tested. Adaptation of CAS to transparent encryption of scalable video is also demonstrated in this paper.     

How Seniors in Taiwan Use Information Technology: Computer and Cell Phones

In most developed and developing nations seniors lag behind the general population in information technology (IT) adoption and use. This phenomenon has been labeled the “gray divide” by various authors. This study examines the use of IT by seniors in Taiwan. We conducted a survey to examine Taiwanese seniors’ computer and cell phone ownership and use as well as attitudes and behaviors that result from and influence use, to better understand the extent to which Taiwanese seniors have and will utilize IT. We found that seniors in Taiwan had generally high usage and access to computers and cell phones; however, the duration of use these two devices was relatively low. Our focus was on computers and mobile phones because they are the most commonly used personal IT appliances. These devices are the “face” of IT to users. This study also examined self-efficacy, satisfaction, and comfort with these devices, as well as positive and negative attitudes, because research has shown these to influence the use of IT. Taiwanese seniors had generally positively attitudes and beliefs toward information technology.     

Video game experience predicts virtual, but not real navigation performance

In recent years, studies have shown that video game experience is related to improvements across a variety of cognitive and visuospatial tasks. This study investigated the relationship between prior video game experience and spatial performance in virtual and real environments. Across two experiments, gaming experience was related to performance in desktop virtual environments; those with more video game experience were more accurate in pointing to nonvisible targets. In contrast, gaming experience was unrelated to three different real environment tasks, suggesting that video games may primarily influence perceptual and cognitive abilities in the visual domain over abilities that also involve kinesthetic or vestibular input. Contrary to expectations, gaming experience was also related to performance in immersive virtual environments, which may be related to the use of a joystick interface during immersive travel. Video game experience was also positively related to performance in a dynamic spatial task and to verbal SAT and math SAT scores. Sex differences in desktop virtual navigation and dynamic spatial ability were eliminated when game experience was included as a covariate.     

A case study of the in-class use of a video game for teaching high school history

This study examines the case of a sophomore high school history class where Making History, a video game designed with educational purposes in mind, is used in the classroom to teach about World War II. Data was gathered using observation, focus group and individual interviews, and document analysis. The high school was a rural school located in a small town in the Midwestern United States. The teacher had been teaching with the game for several years and spent one school week teaching World War II, with students playing the game in class for three days of that week. The purpose of this study was to understand teacher and student experiences with and perspectives on the in-class use of an educational video game. Results showed that the use of the video game resulted in a shift from a traditional teacher-centered learning environment to a student-centered environment where the students were much more active and engaged. Also, the teacher had evolved implementation strategies based on his past experiences using the game to maximize the focus on learning.     

The effects of the size and weight of a mobile device on an educational game

In this paper, we present an educational game for an iPhone and a Tablet PC. The main objective of the game was to reinforce children's knowledge about the water cycle. The game included different interaction forms like the touch screen and the accelerometer and combined AR mini-games with non-AR mini-games for better gameplay immersion. The main differences between the two devices were screen size and weight. A comparative study to check how these differences affect different aspects was carried out. Seventy-nine children from 8 to 10 years old participated in the study. From the results, we observed that the different characteristics (screen size and weight) of the devices did not influence the children's acquired knowledge, engagement, satisfaction, ease of use, or AR experience. There was only a statistically significant difference for the global score in which the iPhone was scored higher. We would like to highlight that the scores for the two devices and for all the questions were very high with means of over 4 (on a scale from 1 to 5). These positive results suggest that games of this kind could be appropriate educational games and that the mobile device used may not be a decisive factor.     

Virtual reality software package for implementing motor learning and rehabilitation experiments

Virtual reality games for rehabilitation are attracting increasing growth. In particular, there is a demand for games that allow therapists to identify an individual’s difficulties and customize the control of variables, such as speed, size, distance, as well as visual and auditory feedback. This study presents and describes a virtual reality software package (Bridge Games) to promote rehabilitation of individuals living with disabilities and highlights preliminary researches of its use for implementing motor learning and rehabilitation. First, the study presents seven games in the software package that can be chosen by the rehabilitation team, considering the patient’s needs. All game characteristics are described including name, function presentation, objective and valuable measurements for rehabilitation. Second, preliminary results illustrate some applications of two games, considering 343 people with various disabilities and health status. Based on the results, in the Coincident Timing game, there was a main effect of movement sensor type (in this instance the most functional device was the keyboard when compared with Kinect and touch screen) on average time reached by sample analyzed, F(2, 225) = 4.42, p < 0.05. Similarly, in the Challenge! game, a main effect was found for movement sensor type. However, in this case, touch screen provided better performance than Kinect and Leap Motion, F(2, 709) = 5.90, p < 0.01. Thus, Bridge Games is a possible software game to quantify motor learning. Moreover, the findings suggest that motor skills might be practiced differently depending on the environmental interface in which the game may be used.     

Gender difference in mobile phone use and the impact of digital device exposure on neck posture

This cross-sectional study aimed to identify gender differences in the cervical postures when young adults were using mobile phones, as well as the correlations between the postures and the digital devices use (computer and mobile phone). Questionnaires regarding the habits of computer and mobile phone use were administrated to 429 subjects aged from 17 to 33 years old (19.75 ± 2.58 years old). Subjects were instructed to stand habitually and use a mobile phone as in daily life; the sagittal head and cervical postures were measured by head flexion, neck flexion angle and gaze angle. Male participants had a significantly larger head flexion angle (96.41° ± 12.23° vs. 93.57° ± 12.62°, p = 0.018) and neck flexion angle (51.92° ± 9.55° vs. 47.09° ± 9.45°, p < 0.001) than females. There were significant differences in head (F = 3.62, p = 0.014) and neck flexion (F = 3.99, p = 0.009) between different amounts of computer use.

Practitioner Summary: We investigated possible gender differences in head and neck postures of young adults using mobile phones, as well as the potential correlations between these postures and digital device use. We found that males displayed larger head and neck flexion angles than females, which were associated with the amount of computer use.     

Low back injury risk during repositioning of patients in bed: the influence of handling technique,patient weight and disability

The objective of the study was to investigate the low back load during repositioning of patients in bed and to assess the influence of patient's weight and disability. Nine female health care workers (HCWs) carried out six patient-handling tasks with different patient weight (59 ± 1, 83 ± 2 and 110 ± 4 kg) and handicap (hemiplegia, paraplegia and near-paralysis). The tasks were performed with optional use of simple, low-tech assistant devices (draw and sliding sheets). Peak low back compression exceeded the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health action level of 3400 N in 25% of all trials (418). The influence of the HCW, i.e. the technique and assistive devices used, was higher than the effect of weight and disability in all tasks studied. ANOVA showed that on average for the six tasks 37%, 10% and 6% of the variance in low back loading was caused by variation in the factors HCW, patient's weight and disability, respectively. The result of this study is relevant for HCWs. It is shown that the repositioning technique and use of friction-reducing devices have higher influence on the low back load of the HCW than the patient's weight and disability.     

Book Review

In this experiment, older and younger novice mobile phone users were examined when using handsets of different complexity. The independent variables were user age (young: 20 – 35 years; old: 50 – 64 years) and cognitive complexity of two mobile phones (Nokia 3210; Siemens C35i). The cognitive complexity of the phones was defined by the number of production rules applied when processing the four experimental tasks. Dependent variables were effectiveness and efficiency as taken from user protocols and the reported ease of use. The less complex phone (Nokia) performed significantly better than the complex one (Siemens). However, the benefit from the lower complexity was much larger than theoretically predicted. Thus, defining cognitive complexity of technical devices by the number of production rules does not account for the real difficulties which users experience. Older users had a lower navigation performance than younger users, however their performance matched younger users' when using mobiles with low complexity.     

Towards 6DoF live video streaming system for immersive media

Based on the three rotational degrees (video in three dimensions, on the X, Y and Z axes) of freedom provided by VR, the viewer is free to control the viewing point and has six degrees of freedom (6DoF). When watching a sports game, the audience is no longer limited by the position of the camera, and can freely choose the viewing angle and position just like watching in the real world, which can greatly improve the immersion of viewing. However, the major barrier that prevents 6DoF video live from being industrialized lies in the extremely high computational complexity, of which multi-view depth estimation and Depth Image Based Rendering (DIBR) is difficult to realize. And existing devices do not have hardware interfaces that support multi-views coding technology. Therefore, we need new technologies for depth estimation and virtual view synthesis, and we need to use existing hardware coding/decoding interfaces to reduce power consumption. In this paper, we provide a 6DoF live video system, which includes multi-view depth estimation technique based on unsupervised learning, virtual viewpoint real-time rendering technology and 6DoF video coding. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed acceleration method can speed up the original depth estimation algorithm by more than 34x, and can speed up the original DIBR algorithm by more than 168x. With our 6DoF video coding method, experimental results show that the bit rate achieves an average of 70%, 64%, 33%, 60% and 66% bitrate saving for AVC, HEVC, AV1, AVS3, VVC codec standard respectively.

     

Is the use of information and communication technology related to performance in working memory tasks? Evidence from seventh-grade students

The main purpose of this study was to assess whether seventh-grade students use of information and communication technology (ICT) was related to performance on working memory tasks. In addition, the study tested whether the relationship between ICT use and performance on working memory tasks interacted with seventh-grade students’ socioeconomic level and gender. 275 students recruited from 30 Chilean schools were grouped according to their self-reported use of PC, the Internet, Chat and Video games. To assess students’ working memory performance, they were tested with a digit span test and a visuo-spatial measure. Only one of our two dependent variables reflected a relationship between specific profiles of ICT use and working memory. Higher scores on the digits span test were related to those user profiles combining PC use and video game play, that is, those identified as Full users and as PC and Console Gamers. We did not find an interaction effect of gender and ICT use or an interaction effect of socioeconomic level and ICT use. There are three possible explanations for these results: first, a proclivity of students with higher working memory capacity to engage in technology use; second, an impact on working memory of potential differences in multitasking; and, third, an impact on working memory of video game play. However, these results must be interpreted cautiously since scores on the GEFT, our visuo-spatial working memory measure, were not related to any profile of technology use. As serious educational games become more regularly used at school, previous differences in video game experience become growingly important. Future research must study whether the intended benefits of serious educational games are being mediated by individual differences in previous exposure to video games and other information and computer technologies, with independence of the directionality of the relationship between video game play and working memory.     

Virtual ideals: The effect of video game play on male body image

The perpetuation of unrealistic body ideals by popular media has been linked to negative body image and self-esteem; however, the influence of video games has remained largely unexamined despite their growing popularity as a media form, particularly among men. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether playing video games that emphasize an unrealistic male body ideal has a negative impact on body satisfaction. Participants played a highly realistic video game for 45 min and then completed questionnaires measuring muscularity concerns and body image. Men randomized to the experimental group played the game with a character of exaggerated muscularity, whereas those randomized to the control group played with a character of average build. Men in the muscular condition reported significantly lower body satisfaction than men in the control condition. Considering the wide-spread use of video games, as well as the increasing muscularity of the ideal male body in popular culture, this finding could have important implications for the psychological well-being of men who regularly play video games. Further research should assess whether this lowered body satisfaction is maintained and to determine if negative behavioral consequences emerge.     

Tangible versus graphical user interfaces for robot programming: exploring cross-age children’s preferences

This study explores children’s opinions and preferences regarding two isomorphic user interfaces that can be used for introductory programming activities, a tangible and a graphical one. The first system (tangible) comprises 46 cube-shaped blocks that represent simple programming structures and can be interconnected to form the programming code. The second system (graphical) presents on-screen the same programming space to the user (icons similar in appearance and operation with the tangible blocks). These two operationally equivalent user interfaces were given to three children groups of different ages (5–6, 7–8 and 11–12 years) to program the behavior of a Lego NXT robot. Children in dyads were let to interact with both systems, and during the activity, data were collected regarding children’s first-sight preference, enjoyment and easiness-to-use. The quantitative and qualitative analysis followed indicated that the tangible interface was more attractive especially for girls, and it was more enjoyable and finally characterized as easier to use only by younger children who were less experienced with computers. On the contrary, for older (11–12 years old) children, the tangible even though was more enjoyable, it was not considered as the easiest-to-use user interface. Taking into account the lack of empirical evidences related to the tangible user interfaces, this study discusses not only the potential usability advantages but also the disadvantages of tangible user interfaces for children.     

Examining Game Transfer Phenomena in the Hybrid Reality Game,Ingress

ABSTRACT

Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP) is a common video gaming experience in which extended gameplay causes game-related automatic thoughts, involuntary behaviors and perceptions. Currently, there is little research examining GTP in location-based, augmented/hybrid reality (HR) gaming. Based on prior GTP research, HR gamers were predicted to experience all types of GTP while also experiencing GTP specific to HR gaming. 867 Ingress players responded to a survey examining the degree to which they experienced the types of GTP. 31 % of the sample was female and the average age was 36. Ingress players exhibited all types of GTP and were most likely to experience automatic thought process related to the game. Female Ingress players were significantly more likely to experience GTP than males and increases in age were associated with decreases in GTP. 18 % of respondents experienced HR-specific phenomena in which players unintentionally use physical actions in the real world to interact with virtual aspects of the game. Future augmented/HR research should examine the cognitive and physical components underlying HR-specific GTP and how gender and age are associated with experiencing this and GTP related to different platforms and media.     

Flexible learning itinerary vs. linear learning itinerary

The latest video game and entertainment technology and other technologies are facilitating the development of new and powerful e-Learning systems. In this paper, we present a computer-based game for learning about five historical ages. The objective of the game is to reinforce the events that mark the transition from one historical age to another and the order of the historical ages. Our game incorporates natural human–computer interaction based on video game technology, Frontal Projection, and personalized learning. For personalized learning, a Flexible Learning Itinerary has been included, where the children can decide how to direct the flow of their own learning process. For comparison, a Linear Learning Itinerary has also been included, where the children follow a determined learning flow. A study to compare the two different learning itineraries was carried out. Twenty nine children from 8 to 9 years old participated in the study. The analysis of the pre-tests and the post-tests determined that children learned the contents of a game about historical ages. The results show that there were no statistically significant differences between the two learning itineraries. Therefore, our study reveals the potential of computer-based learning games as a tool in the learning process for both flexible and linear itineraries.