Video Games Effects on Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming and More

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Video Games Effects on Consciousness Lucid
Dreaming and More

• Jayne Gackenbach
• Grant MacEwan College
• Athabasca University
• Media, Spiritualities and Social Change
• Boulder, CO

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Technology and Cognition

• Broadly conceptualize technology
• building of artifacts or procedures tools- to
  help people accomplish their goals
• Long influence on human development.
• Whats commonplace to one generation were created
  through a great intellectual struggle by the
  previous generation.
• Tool use is both amplifier of human action and
  transformative of human mind.
• Video gaming
• Actively navigate through representational
  space
• To date media exposure has been largely a
  passive, observer experience

Sternberg and Preiss (2005). Intelligence and
Technology The Impact of Tools on the Nature and
Development of Human Abilities
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Video Game Play Consciousness

• Video Game Play Associated with
• Increases in attentional abilities
• Increased sense of presence/absorption in VR
• Increased experiences of flow while playing
• Some subjects reported experiences during video
  game play indicative of altered states of
  consciousness (e.g., drifting, flying or changes
  in visual or auditory perception)

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Dream Studies to be Reported

• 2006 original study on lucidity and onward..
• Study 1 Morning after dreams and media use
• Study 2 Dreams of Hard Core Gamers
• Study 3 Hall and VandeCastle Content Analysis of
  recent dreams
• Study 4 Video gaming and the Dream Threat
  Simulation Theory
• Study 5 Bizarreness analysis of morning after
  dreams

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Control Dreaming
3 sometimes
2 rarely
F(4,299)3.610, p.007) controlling for motion
sickness and dream recall
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Lucid Dreaming
3 sometimes
2 rarely
F(4,299)7.857, plt.0001 controlling for motion
sickness and dream recall
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Hard Core Gamer

• Play video games on average several times a week
• Typical playing session more than 2 hours
• Been playing video games since before grade three
• Played 50 or more video games over your lifetime

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Study 1

• Gackenbach, J.I. (in press) Electronic Media and
  Lucid-Control Dreams Morning after Reports.
  Dreaming.
• Gackenbach, J.I. Kuruvilla, B. (2007, June).
  Dreams and Media Use. Paper presented at the
  annual meeting of the International Association
  for the Study of Dreams, Sonoma, CA. Available
  at www.spiritwatch.ca

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Background

• previous studies showing lucid dreams associated
  with video game play
• Based on reflections on dream history
• Need recent dream reports
• Video game play only one form of electronic media
  in wide use today

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2007
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Online Questionnaire

• Dream report and when
• Normal sleep length and rested amount
• Questions on media use history and media used the
  day before dream
• Questions reflecting about dream reported
• Dreams for analysis were chosen if
• Last night
• Rested (had typical amount of sleep)
• N 152

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Extraction Method Principal Component Analysis.
Last night, rested dreams, N 152
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Why? Parallels VR/lucidity

• Lucid/control dreams
• Mental construction of dream world with no
  outside input through senses
• Lucid dreamers show better spatial skills
• Lucid dreamers have better vestibular systems
  (not susceptible to motion sickness)
• Meditation is highly associated with lucidity and
  is training in developing one pointed absorption
  (especially concentrative forms)

• Virtual Reality (video games)
• VR most experienced in video games but to a
  lesser extent in other electronic media
  (technologically constructed)
• Video gaming has been associated with improved
  spatial skills
• Low motion sickness needed to play a lot
• High absorption is reported by players

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Study 2

• Gackenbach, J.I., Matty, Ian, Kuruvilla, Beena,
  Olischefski, Jordan, Zederayko, Alexis Samaha,
  Ashley Nicole (in press). Video Game Play Waking
  and Dreaming Consciousness. Anthropology and
  Consciousness.
• Gackenbach, J.I., Zederayko, A. Kuruvilla, B.
  Olischefski, J. (2007, June). High End Video Game
  Players Play Experience and Dreams. Symposium
  presented at the annual meeting of the
  International Association for the Study of
  Dreams. Sonamo, CA. Available at
  www.spiritwatch.ca

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Participants

• Solicited through on campus posters and emails in
  early 2006
• 25 men and two women interviewed
• 85 were 25 years of age or younger
• Hour interviews asking
• Experiences of self during play
• Dreams of gaming
• Altered States of consciousness related to play

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Factor Analysis
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Hall Van de Castle Coding System

• Frequency equals intensity
• High inter-rater reliability
• Well developed norms
• Uses categories which are pertinent to waking
  concerns that may influence dreaming.

27 gamers 56 dreams males norms

• Misfortune/Good Fortune (Sickness, Falling,
  Winning)
• Emotions (Apprehension, Confusion, Happiness)
• Physical Surroundings (Settings and Objects)
• Descriptive Elements (Color, Size, Velocity)

• Character (Number, Gender, Identity, Age)
  
• Social Interactions (Aggression, Friendliness,
  Sexual)
• Activities (Movement, Verbal activity, Visual
  activity)
• Striving (Success, Failure)

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Significant Differences from Male Norms

• Fewer friends (16 vs 31, plt0.002) yet more
  dead or imaginary characters appearing in dream
  reports (21 vs 0, plt0.000).
• Why be human in a game? They have fewer powers
  than other types of creatures.

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Significant Differences from Male Norms

• Subject 001- Dream 11
• I dreamt I was a character is Underworld 2,
  it was a werewolf character and then I became a
  3rd person. It was the two main characters, it
  was the vampire girl and a hybrid werewolf
  character and I was another werewolf character
  beside them and we went into a vampire coven and
  we got to the weapons section of the vampire
  coven and then I woke up

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Significant Differences from Male Norms

• Smaller number of dreams with aggression (32 vs
  47, plt0.023)
• yet more intense aggression (namely physical
  aggression, 86 vs 50, plt0.0001) in those dreams
  that did contain it.

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Significant Differences from Male Norms

• Subject 002- Dream 6
• so I went outside with my cat and shot
  these criminals that were trying to eat my dad
  and they were on top of my dad trying to eat his
  arms and he was fighting them off, and they were
  trying to hold him down and bite his shoulders
  and there was blood and stuff. And it was a very
  graphic shootout for a dream it was very blood
  and guts ya know? And when I ran out of
  ammunition there was like pistol whipping and
  stuff going on and that one sticks out in my mind
  because it was very graphic.

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Significant Differences from Male Norms

• Fewer Misfortunes
• (7 vs 36, plt0.000)
• Fewer Bodily Misfortunes
• (0 vs 29, plt0.024)

Thus less victim /more control
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But

• Greater percentage of self-negativity (84 vs
  65, plt0.028)
• Fewer friendliness
• (2 vs 38, plt0.000)
• Fewer sexuality
• (0 vs 12, plt0.000)
• Fewer good fortunes
• (0 vs 6, plt0.000)

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No Difference from Males Norms

• Success
• Failure
• Striving
• Family members

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Study 3 Gackenbach, J.I. Kuruvilla, Beena
(2008). Hall and VandeCastle Content Analysis of
Video Game Players Dreams. Paper to be presented
at the International Association for the Study of
Dreams meeting, Montreal, Quebec.
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Sample Comparisons

• collected via questionnaire (this study)
• more males than females gamers (both)
• both were identified as high end gamers by the
  same four questions
• college students at same Canadian college
• this sample is of more recently recalled dreams
• last night, last week or last month
• 69 dreams in this sample

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Similar Findings to Interview Study

• more familiar characters,
• more dead and imaginary characters,
• dreams with at least one instance of (less in
  each case)
• Aggression,
• friendliness,
• sexuality,
• misfortune, and
• good fortune

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Some differences from norms disappeared

• there was no difference in
• aggression/friendliness,
• physical aggression,
• self-negativity, and
• bodily misfortunes.

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Study 4

• Kuruvilla, Beena Gackenbach, J.I. (2008, July).
  Threat Simulation Theory and Video Game Play.
  Poster to be presented at the annual meeting of
  the International Association for the Study of
  Dreams, Montreal, Quebec. Will be available at
  www.spiritwatch.ca
• Beena Kurvillas honors thesis

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Threat Simulation Theory

• dreaming is an adaptive process with an
  evolutionary foundation (Revonsuo, 2000).
• dreaming allows us to simulate threatening
  situations in the safety of a virtual environment
  of dreams.
• continued practice would allow an individual to
  better prepare for these possibly dangerous
  instances, were they to arise in the waking world

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Dreams Collected

• Online Questionnaires
• night before dreams only,
• average hours since dream to recollection being
  under one hour
• minimum word count of 40 words
• 98 participants/dreams
• 35 males
• 63 females

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Method

• Low and high end gamers identified using the same
  four criteria as previous studies
• Two blind-raters manually coded the dreams using
  Revonsuos method of threat simulation content
  analysis for dreams (Revonsuo Valli, 2001
• Also self report questions on the online
  questionnaire about the dream that was reported

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Day BeforeMedia Use
Threat Simula-tion
Self Report on Dream
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Study 5

• Gackenbach, J.I. Kuruvilla, B. (2008, July).
  Video Game Play and Dream Bizarreness. Paper to
  be presented at the annual meeting of the
  International Association for the Study of
  Dreams, Montreal, Quebec. Will be available at
  www.spiritwatch.ca

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Dream Bizarreness

• thought to be the differentiator between waking
  and dreaming thought,
• an indicate of creativity, and,
• most recently, as a model for solving the binding
  problem in consciousness Revonsuo (2006)
• how does our phenomenal experience of self in the
  world, or being conscious, emerge from its
  biological bases.
• a dream object does not transform randomly into
  another object, but into an object that shares
  many semantic or associative features with the
  first. In the waking state such associations do
  not intrude into our consciousness, for they are
  unable to override the externally supplied
  sensory information (p. 247).
• Thus dream bizarreness offers a rare window into
  the nature of these semantic associative networks
  at work without their normal waking constraints.

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Method

• College students
• Last night, rested dreams
• 152 dreams fulfilled these criteria
• at least 50 words long
• Gamer group determined by same 4 questions.
• 90 low end gamers
• 62 high end gamers

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Dream Scoring

• Revonsuo and Salmivallis (1995) Content
  Analysis of Bizarreness scale
• 2 step process in scoring dreams for bizarreness
• identification of elements in the dream
• these elements scored for bizarreness or
  non-bizarreness
• Bizarreness and Nonbizarreness Sums calculated
  for preliminary analysis (ANCOVA with word count
  as covariate)

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Low gamers
Significant main effects and interaction
High gamers
Bizarreness Sum
Non-bizarreness Sum
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Conclusions Implications

• Lucidity/control
• Do these preliminary results imply that
  lucid/control dreaming will become widespread
  given the saturation of media?
• Aggression/Threat Simulation
• What happens when gamers nightmares are gone or
  do they simply change?
• Bizarreness
• Are gamers semantic networks more diverse?