Jayne Gackenbach

MacEwan University · Department of Psychology

The purpose of our study is to investigate gender and culture and their relationship with two types of Internet media use: gaming and social media. This study is part of a survey administered at one Canadian and three Chinese universities. We hypothesized that men would be higher-end gamer’s vis-à-vis women across cultures and that the reverse is l...

Early work on the nightmare protection hypothesis found that males who play combat-centric video games frequently did not experience nightmares in the same way as their counterparts. Rather, their dreams involved fighting back and feeling empowered. However, this effect did not occur for female high-end gamers in a follow-up study with students. Th...

Canadian students of varying cultural backgrounds took an online survey for course credit examining their dream experiences (Dream Intensity Scale, DIS; Yu, 2010) and history of media use, i.e., social media and video game play. Regression analyses onto the data found that the role of sex and culture, relative to history of media use, was strongest...

Cirucci (2013a) hypothesized that video game players would display similarities to social media users and that this relationship should be examined. This inquiry compared university students who varied in the degree to which they use social media (SMU) and play video games (VGP) on several dream indices and 1 personality inventory. Dreams have been...

Two studies examined the relationship between measures of video game play, dream bizarreness and dream type, with a conceptual emphasis on dream lucidity. The varimax rotated factor analyses with some variables of each type replicated across studies, showing no association between gaming, dream bizarreness and dream lucidity. Of additional interest...

A new waking influence has emerged that is becoming so widely experienced that it bears further consideration in its own right as to it's influence on subsequent night time dreams. That is, digital life. It ranges from listening to music to texting to checking facebook status to playing video games to information checking. All of these activities a...

In a follow-up from Gackenbach and Kuruvilla (2008a), data analysis was undertaken examining the metacognitive qualities of video game players dreams associated with lucidity. Kahan and LaBerge’s (1994) Metacognitive, Affective, Cognitive Experience Questionnaire (MACE) responses were examined in a principle component factor analysis. Several facto...

This inquiry is a replication and extension of a recent study with military gamers examining the thesis that playing video games might act as a type of nightmare protection. This hypothesis is based on the idea of a well-rehearsed defense due to game play, a numbing against violence, and the idea that memories in the 6 hours posttrauma are best int...

This is a consideration of possible issues in using expert versus trained dream coders. Our thesis is that due to their lifetime training, expert coders would be more aware of subtle aspects of their area of their expertise in dreams. Two domains are discussed video games and religious/spiritual experience in dreams.

Hard-core video game players have developed a culture of their own, which has become large and potentially influential in today's society. While much of the research and media attention into the effects of gaming have focused on the negative consequences, there are also numerous positive effects, including those on various aspects of consciousness....

Past research has shown that high-end video game play is associated with bizarre dreams (Gackenbach, Kuruvilla, & Dopko, 2009a). The purpose of this study was to determine if the higher bizarreness in gamers’ dreams could be replicated and if so, to inquire if it is due to the unusual worlds they are exposed to during video game play, or to higher...

A program of research into the effects of video game play on subsequent night-time dreams is reviewed. The chapter begins with a brief introduction to the value of dreams in terms of information processing and a discussion of why video game play is valuable for the study of dreams. Three areas of inquiry in terms of video game effects are then exam...

Soldiers who play video games to varying degrees were solicited to fill out a survey on dreams and gaming. A prescreening filtered out those who were not soldiers, who did not game, and who were suffering from various psychological problems in the last six months. The remaining soldiers filled out these inventories: general and military demographic...

p>In response to the discussion between Hobson and Shredl the history of our program of research for coding dreams of video game players both after playing a game and without such consideration was reviewed. While many of our studies are about response style in dreams resulting from game play, we also have considered incorporation issues. Some of o...

A felt sense of presence in games versus dreams was measured by a self-report inventory applied immediately after playing an immersive video game for 20-25 min (a single session) and immediately after waking up (from a dream, at home, for 14 days after the game session). After prescreening, 40 subjects were randomly assigned to one of four groups t...

While presence, or the sense of being there, is widely understood to be important in game play, it has not often been examined in relation to video game genre. This is important as presence in a game informs the absorption in play. In the present inquiry, self reported presence during a recently played game was examined as a function of genre. Pres...

IntroductionMindfulness is a property of consciousness which isbeginning to receive considerable attention from psychol-ogists. It has been described as a non-elaborative, non-judgmental, present-centered awareness where all thoughtsand feeling are acknowledged and accepted (Bishop et al.2004). In a state of mindfulness, attention is regulated such...

A case study of a young man who is an avid video game player and designer is the focus of this paper. His online Website offers over 800 dreams, of which over half were content analyzed using the Hall and Van de Castle system. Also available were daily blogs. Thus, several research questions could be addressed. Did the diary evidence consistency ac...

Video-game play offers the opportunity to investigate the continuity hypothesis. Using interactive video games rather than passive films as a controlled manipulation allows for an engaging presleep experience. Several researchers have successfully used video games to investigate dream incorporation. In this study, interactivity and fidelity were th...

In a series of studies Gackenbach and colleagues have been investigating the relationship between video game play and dreams. Three lines of inquiry have been pursued, cognitive factors, emotional content and bizarreness in dreams associated with video game play. The question across studies being does hard core video game play change these fundamen...

In a series of studies, J. Gackenbach has been mapping the effects of heavy video game play on consciousness, including dreaming. The reason that gamers are being investigated is that they represent a group of people who are engaging in the most immersive media experience widely available today. With its audio and visual interactive nature as well...

Video games were evaluated by players very familiar with them, along five cognitive dimensions drawn from the PASS model. These 233 gamers evaluated up to three games each which were then placed into genres defined by GameSpot.com and compared in terms of their perceived cognitive components. Game genre, for which there was sufficient number of eva...

Lucid dreams, as well as control dreams, have recently been reported as associated with video game play (Gackenbach, 2006). In this study, dreams were collected from the morning after a night of rested sleep as well as electronic media use from the day before the dream. In a factor analysis, lucid and control dreams were associated with all electro...

Cognitive skill improvement associated with video game play has been well documented showing a range of improved abilities from spatial skills to problem solving and general intelligence. The implications for consciousness and it’s development have not been as widely examined. Recent research into the emergence of consciousness in sleep as related...

Revonsuo proposes an evolutionary theory of dreaming in which dreams allow an individual to prepare for real world threats in the safety of the virtual setting of the dream world. Based upon previous work examining the dreams of video game players, it was hypothesized that high-end gamers would experience fewer threat simulation dreams because of f...

Recent dreams were collected over a year’s period from college undergraduates. In addition to providing self-evaluations of the dreams, participants were also asked to answer a variety of media use questions. These were both in terms of their media use the day before the dream and in terms of their historical media use with the most interactive and...

Two sets of content analyses were computed on 56 dreams of 27 hard core video game players gathered during semi-structured interviews in the winter term of 2006 at a Canadian college. The standard dream content analysis system from Hall and VandeCastle [19] was used to analyze these dreams as was another content analysis focused upon lucid/control...

The improvement of various cognitive skills associated with video game play has been well documented; however, the development of consciousness implications have not been considered. In the present study several potential indicators of consciousness development, including and especially lucid dreaming frequency, were examined as a function of video...

In the present study men who varied in the degree to which they viewed themselves as relatively masculine and/or feminine and the degree to which they expected others to engage in activities based on their gender sex (sex role attitude) were tachistoscopically presented pictures of a man and a woman engaged in sex role nontraditional activities. A...

Eight years have passed since publication of the first edition of this work. During that time, the Internet has become ever more prominent the world over, with 200% growth in usage outside the US, 100% growth in usage in the US, and with the highest penetration in America, at 68% of all households. Psychology of the Internet, 2e explores the psych...

Standard ambulatory night sleep electroencephalograph (EEG) of 11 long-term practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program reporting "higher states of consciousness" during sleep (the experimental group) was compared to that of nine short-term practitioners and 11 non-practitioners. EEG tracings during stages 3 and 4 sleep showed the e...

This two-year longitudinal study investigated the effect of participation in a special university curriculum, whose principal innovative feature is twice-daily practice of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and TM-Sidhi program, on performance on Cattell's Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) and Hick's reaction time. These measures are known to b...

Reviews psychological and psychophysiological frameworks for understanding the experience of lucid dreaming (knowing you are dreaming while the dream is ongoing). Several of the psychological approaches take an information processing view of lucid dreaming. One approach sees lucidity in sleep as a cognitive tool whereas others put more emphasis on...

Lucid dreaming has been said to be within the capability of all individuals (LaBerge, 1985). Based on analyses of the incidence of this dream experience among university students and among persons with an expressed interest in dreaming, a majority have reported experiencing at least one lucid dream during their lifetime, and about 20% have reported...

In a review of Stephen LaBerge’s (1985) Lucid Dreaming, David Foulkes (1985) asked a key question: How are lucid and nonlucid dreams different? He pointed out that such a consideration may be the most interesting implication for ordinary dreaming. The issue is, Foulkes notes, what else changes when you change ordinary dreaming by adding a self that...

Investigated the relationship between field independence and lucid dreaming ability in 3 studies over a 5-yr period with 278 Ss. It was hypothesized that field independence would be more characteristic of Ss who were able to recognize that they were dreaming while still in the dream (i.e., lucid dreamers), than of those who did not possess this abi...

Investigated the hypothesis that lucid dreams would be recalled as more emotionally arousing than nonlucid dreams. Adults ( n = 181) were recontacted after having participated in a month-long, day-by-day dream recording project and asked to provide additional information about their lucid dreams, that is, awareness of the dream while still in the d...

Psychological and physiological stress indices were taken from collegiate swimmers of both sexes prior to a practice session and prior to a meet. At another time these same individuals were administered a scale to ascertain their relative self-reported masculinity and femininity. Analysis of covariance demonstrated that 14 males had higher systolic...

In the present study, male and female Ss increased in self report measures of anxiety, hostility, and depression after they had viewed a pro women's liberation film. Among females, nonsexists showed greater increments than sexists on all three variables, significantly so on hostility. However, among males, nonsexists and sexists did not differ in a...

Unlike many books on sleep and dreams, the emphasis in this volume is on dreaming rather than on sleeping. This book gives the reader a basic grounding in what we know about the sleep state and then details sleep mentation or dreaming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Discusses considerations to be taken by the potential lucid dream researcher or lucid dreamer when attempting to increase the frequency of dreaming lucidly (i.e., consciousness awareness of dreaming while the dream is ongoing). Intentional techniques and unintentional considerations, including situations and individual propensities, for inducing lu...

Argues that A. Ahsen's (see record 1992-33983-001) linkage of lucid dreaming to his own work on the content analysis of dreams is inappropriate. Rather, lucid dreaming is more appropriately classed with the transpersonal traditions of meditation, while Ahsen's work shows closer parallels to traditional psychotherapies. Lucid dreams and meditation...

Thesis--Virginia Commonwealth University, Dept. of Psychology. Bibliography: leaves 236-251.