Jayne Gackenbach

MacEwan University · Department of Psychology

The study of the effects of interactive media has mainly focused on dysregulated behaviors, the conceptualization of which is supported by the paradigms of addiction. Research into Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP) examines the interplay between video game features, events while playing, and the manipulation of hardware, which can lead to sensory-perce...

The evolution of our species seems to be transforming from biological to technological. As we continue to develop interesting and exotic technologies, we are not only influencing society and ourselves but are also glimpsing into the very nature of reality. While our waking reality influences our lives the most, never before has such a large part of...

Chinese and Canadian people answered surveys in their native languages about their self-construal, media use history, and dreaming experiences. This included reporting a recent dream. The nightmare protection thesis was investigated. Sex was found to be modulated by culture in terms of the relationship between types of media used and negative dream...

Just as our dreaming reality is constructed, our waking reality may also be constructed. While our waking reality influences our lives the most, other constructed realities also have impact. Yet, never before has such a large part of the population been so widely affected by another constructed reality beyond dreaming; specifically, our technologic...

Video game play affects the individual and culture in a multitude of facets. Evidence is presented to suggest there are many positive effects of video gaming on well-being and less evidence to support the ideology that video games lead to heightened levels of aggression in adolescents. We show how video games are affecting the dreams of gamers in o...

Using the ideas generated in Revonsuo and Valli's Threat Simulation model of the function of dreaming, previous research looked at how military personal's dreams were associated with video game play. A nightmare protection effect was found and replicated using an undergraduate student population. Based on the previous findings, in this study an exp...

As technology continues to rapidly advance, individuals and society are profoundly changed. So too are the tools used to measure this universe and, therefore, our understanding of reality improves. Boundaries of Self and Reality Online examines the idea that technological advances associated with the Internet are moving us in multiple domains towar...

The predictability of culture, gender, and media use for dream type information in Canadian students was the focus of this inquiry. Independent variables were gender (sex of subject and relative masculinity and femininity) culture; (ethnic identity and self-construal of independence versus interdependence) and media use (various gaming, social medi...

This chapter contains a summary of the research in support of a hypothesis that video-gameplay grants some gamers protection from nightmares. Secondarily, the effects that video games have on our dreams are described and how that alters our emotional processing and regulation in waking life. Evidence is presented in support of these effects for mal...

Just as our dreaming reality is constructed, our waking reality may also be constructed. While our waking reality influences our lives the most, other constructed realities also have impact. Yet, never before has such a large part of the population been so widely affected by another constructed reality beyond dreaming; specifically, our technologic...

The idea that such pervasive and ever-growing immersion in virtual play affects consciousness seems obvious and is the focus of this volume. These apparently wide-ranging topics have never been collected together under the "consciousness and gaming" header. Adding to any serious inquiry into gaming and consciousness must be the first-person account...

The advent of the Internet has changed the culture profoundly, and has had a strong influence on how people relate to themselves as well as to each other. People differ in the degree to which they are susceptible to the disinhibition effect, just as online situations vary as to how likely they are to elicit this effect. Personality research studies...

Higher states of consciousness (HSC) are long considered to lie outside the discipline of psychology, in part because the experience is rare and subjective and often unreliably intermittent. But in the last 30 years, a growing body of research has documented the existence of and the neurophysiological signatures of these states. The latest phase in...

The previous edition provided the first resource for examining how the Internet affects our definition of who we are and our communication and work patterns. It examined how normal behavior differs from the pathological with respect to Internet use. Coverage includes how the internet is used in our social patterns: work, dating, meeting people of s...

Our lives have become intertwined with computer-mediated communication. The Internet, arguably the most potent infotechnology ever created, is changing what it means to be human. It is having both positive and negative effects on health. The Internet is potentially a vehicle for expanding consciousness, yet is also a trigger of socially deviant beh...

Two studies evaluated the relationship between attitudes toward sex roles and learning of nonsense syllables associated with pictured situations differing in sex-role appropriateness. Syllables associated with inappropriate situations were learned faster than those associated with appropriate situations; among women non-traditionals had faster lear...

Female American college students (n = 29) who differed in terms of their sex-role attitudes were asked to learn nonsense syllables paired with photographs depicting a male and a female engaged in activities differing in their sex-role appropriateness. Sex-role neutral slides were learned the fastest followed by the sex-role inappropriate slides. Ap...

Cross-cultural data on 57 U.S. and 24 Australian women are provided for the Bem Sex-role Inventory. Femininity scores significantly differed; American women scored more feminine than Australian women. There was no cultural difference in masculinity or androgyny scores.

In the present study the relationship between unipolar models of sex-role identity (i.e., the degree to which a person perceives him/her self as relatively masculine and/or feminine) and situational cues (i.e., females engaged in successful activities which vary in their sex-role appropriateness) on fear of success was investigated. An alternative,...

Male and female blacks and whites whose career goals differed as to sex role stereotypy were administered two sex role inventories. One measured attitudes toward women's expanding sex roles in the home/personal environment, while the other measured sex role attitudes in the working environment. The major finding of the present study is that black w...