research - Tara McGowan on Diigo

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Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - Series - NYTimes.com

GREAT article on literacy decline due to internet addiction/ reading? really great, comprehensive look

Tags: reading, brainresearch, research, study, literacy, internet on 2008-07-29 -All Annotations (0) -About

ike so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer
She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters.
Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.
critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading.
some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.
In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs.
Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”
Last fall the National Endowment for the Arts issued a sobering report linking flat or declining national reading test scores among teenagers with the slump in the proportion of adolescents who said they read for fun.

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Internet and mobile phones become all-pervasive in modern society - Telegraph

Britan Ipsos MORI Surveyed more than 2,000 brits and found that most spend as many as 30 hrs a week online- looks at how internet and mobile phones have become all-pervasive in modern society

Tags: internet, addiction, dependency, research, study, UK on 2008-07-29 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.telegraph.co.uk

A comprehensive study of the importance of the internet in people's lives has
found that thousands spend as many as 30 hours a week online.
The Ipsos MORI survey of more than 2,000 people, carried out across Britain
for the BT 21st Century Life Index report, found:
And while nearly 70 per cent of us say we prefer face-to-face communication to
using the phone or email, nearly 80 per cent say we could not live without a
telephone; our mobile or landline phones. Nineteen per cent say they could
not live without the internet.
The report found that users had begun to look to the internet for help on two
of the most pressing problems of the day – the environment and the credit
crunch. A fifth would like advice on reducing the amount of energy their
technological devices use, while, 23 per cent are using the internet to
compare prices before making a purchase.
The authors of the report state: "In response to recent talk about
recession, internet users have become smarter shoppers, with almost a
quarter either starting to use online price comparison tools before making a
purchase or using them more often."
A study by Duke University and the University of Arizona found that
people who used the internet intensively as a source of advice and to
communicate with "virtual" friends can suffer a decline in their
ability to confide in their real friends and families.
"This change indicates
something that is not good for our society," she said. "Ties with
a close network of people create a safety net."

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The relationship of players to their avatars in MMORPGs: differences between adolescents, emerging adults and adults

Article from Czech Republic on Virtual Worlds and differences b/w kids, teens and adults and their avatars

Tags: avatar, secondlife, virtual, psychosocial, research, study on 2008-07-23 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (2) -About

in list: Psychosocial

more fromwww.cyberpsychology.eu

Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) are persistent virtual worlds falling within the fantasy genre, in which the player controls his or her character which subsequently becomes a part of the online fantasy world.
32 players was obtained upon contacting players in discussion fora, where they were asked to fill in a web-based questionnaire in English. A battery of 12 questions was tested dealing with the various aspects of relationship between the players and their avatars.
The motivation to succeed is significantly stronger among younger male players (i.e. adolescents) and among those who play more intensively. According to Griffiths et al. (2004), the intensity of playing (measured in the number of hours per week) is also characteristic of younger, adolescent players.
From the player's viewpoint, the avatar is a kind of individual overlap owing to which they may experiment with their identities.
the focal role of so-called images in one’s psyche (e.g. Hillman, 1997, Kast, 1992), which are certain complexes around which fantasies and emotions resolve and which can be experienced as certain independent parts of one’s psyche.
it may mean that the player does not perceive the avatar as something “more” but simply as a game mechanism, i.e. something the purpose of which is to reach something else, such as entertainment, social contact, self-esteem, and self-efficacy through success etc.
it is younger players who tend to identify with (i.e. not to distinguish from) their avatars, while the younger the respondents were, the stronger the phenomenon.
“immersion” factor shows a deeper interconnection of the player and the avatar. This factor connects imagination, daydreaming of the game and avatar with the emotional relationship towards it, which has support in the psychodynamic approach considering imaginations and emotions as “two sides of the same coin”
Wolfendale (2006) implies the existence of a stereotype that the attachment to the avatar is something negative and that it concerns socially isolated individuals (or that it leads to social isolation).
majority of “gender swappers” are male.
Adolescents demonstrated the highest tendency to identification of themselves and their avatars, i.e. they had the highest need to perform well in the game.
there is thus a possibility that MMORPGs provide adolescents with space to complete their developmental tasks, typical of this age. Adolescents are focussed on developing the feeling of their own competence, which is strongly linked to the feeling that the individual was an actor and that success resulted from their own skill and capabilities: the perception of one's own performance is thus more important when developing a positive self-assessment that others' opinions.
the importance of the compensation factor decreased with age.
Our study shows that the age is, at least to some extent, an important factor affecting the style of playing MMORPGs, since there is a significantly lower level of identification among adults than among younger players.
among adults, the motivation to play MMORPGs is represented by something else than their avatars (it can be, for instance, the social dimension of the game, etc.). On the other hand, for younger players, the virtual character may be an important motivation factor, especially from the viewpoint of performance and success in the game, as in case of adolescents.

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Internet, Tolerance Spark Change in Urban Gay Communities - Academic Health Center, University of Minnesota

New Study at University of Minnesota finds that Internet is changing urban gay communities, making them quieter because of online dating, etc.

Tags: gay, community, psychosocial, research, study, social, virtual, Minnesota on 2008-07-22 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Psychosocial

more fromwww.ahc.umn.edu

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Why Johnny Won't Read (washingtonpost.com)

Older (2005) but very relevant to what we're losing- ie: reading books, literacy in children

Tags: reading, attention, distraction, technology, research, Bauerlein on 2008-07-22 and saved by3 people -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.washingtonpost.com

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Children and Internet Use: Social, Psychological and Academic Consequences for

A look at effects internet has on Low-Income children, especially.

Tags: psychosocial, children, internet, technology, lowincome, digitaldivide, APA, study, research on 2008-07-17 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Psychosocial

more fromwww.apa.org

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Journal of Virtual Worlds Research « University of Melbourne Library Intelligencer

Interesting new Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- proposes to start an international discussion forum on virtual worlds, their impact and effects on society and psychosocial development and a look at them and gaming.

Tags: psychosocial, virtual, secondlife, virtualworlds, research, forum, study, Australia on 2008-07-16 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Psychosocial

more fromlilyheart.wordpress.com

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Harvard Business Online's Jeff Stibel

Great blog on The Brain and the Internet, how they are similar, how they interact with one another and how they are coming to shape and define one another. Harvard

Tags: Harvard, brain, research, blog, internet, technology on 2008-07-16 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromdiscussionleader.hbsp.com

We are forgetful, reactionary, emotional and spontaneous; we make educated guesses.
Businesses that focus on sparse data and educated guesses will have a paradoxical advantage.
humans take short cuts and make educated guesses because we don’t have perfect memories. And that is what is possible on the Internet.
The Internet is in the early stages of development, call it a baby brain. Websites are proliferating; users are coming online in droves. But eventually the Internet will mature, stop growing and may even shrink.
Using links as a proxy for relevance works well for Google and for the brain.
we have entered a world where the rich always get richer and the popular girl becomes prom queen.
Google’s algorithms are mimicking the brain’s need to clear out the clutter and find the good stuff.
Its hardware is a complex network of computers; its software a complex network of websites. There is a lot we can learn from the brain and it can tell us where the Internet is headed next.
ust as there is no particular reason for this lump inside our heads to appreciate fine wines and music, cry, laugh, reason, love, daydream, and aspire to greater things, there is no reason why silicon or some other fundamental substance (maybe even carbon some day), could not be coaxed into creating something similar.
I see in cyberspace a replication of biological growth itself, like the evolutionary growth of the brain of an insect, or an animal or even a human being.

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Parents Say They’re Getting Control of Their Children’s Exposure to Sex and Violence in the Media – Even Online - Kaiser Family Foundation

Kaiser Family Foundation Report: Concerns of Parents about Children's relationship to media, internet

Tags: parents, study, brainresearch, brain, research, 2007, attention, learning, cognition on 2008-07-15 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.kff.org

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Avatars As Communicators Of Emotions

Scientist looks at avatars as emotional communicators

Tags: avatar, psychosocial, communication, science, study, research on 2008-07-14 and saved by6 people -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.sciencedaily.com

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Attention class - The Boston Globe

Maggie Jackson writes about Attention, Michael Posner, etc.

Tags: Posner, Attention, research, study, Brain, Distracted on 2008-07-11 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Brain Research

more fromwww.boston.com

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Basics - So Young, and So Gadgeted - NYTimes.com

Jean Piaget's Four Cognitive Stages of children related to today's technology consumption by children

Tags: Children, Cognition, Research, Psychology, Brain on 2008-07-11 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Brain Research

more fromwww.nytimes.com

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» Violent Video Games Leave Impact - Psych Central News

Study at University of Indiana found that violent games actually have affect on brain shape, development

Tags: brainresearch, brain, research, study, gaming, neurological on 2008-07-11 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Brain Research

more frompsychcentral.com

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Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic - New York Times

Article looks at numerous different studies being done on how technology has affected people's ability to focus, multitask.

Tags: brainresearch, brain, research, London, Meyer, Study, Multitask, attention on 2008-07-11 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Brain Research

more fromwww.nytimes.com

Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes,” said David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan. “Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information.”
René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University.
Recently completed research at the Institute for the Future of the Mind at Oxford University suggests the popular perception is open to question. A group of 18- to 21-year-olds and a group of 35- to 39-year-olds were given 90 seconds to translate images into numbers, using a simple code.
In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.
Erik Brynjolfsson of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of the paper, along with Sinan Aral of the Stern School of Business at New York University, and Marshall Van Alstyne of Boston University.

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E-Mail Affects Brain More Than Marijuana ( Today’s technology has replaced the smo...)

Hewlett Packard/ University of London Institute of Psychiatry Study founds that constant e-mail use and texting lowers avg. workers IQ by 10 points, 6 points more than pot.

Tags: brainresearch, IQ, brain, research, study, London, email, texting on 2008-07-11 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Brain Research

more fromwww.bio-medicine.org

Tara McGowan's Bookmarks tagged research → View Popular

Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - Series - NYTimes.com

Internet and mobile phones become all-pervasive in modern society - Telegraph

The relationship of players to their avatars in MMORPGs: differences between adolescents, emerging adults and adults

Internet, Tolerance Spark Change in Urban Gay Communities - Academic Health Center, University of Minnesota

Why Johnny Won't Read (washingtonpost.com)

Children and Internet Use: Social, Psychological and Academic Consequences for

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research « University of Melbourne Library Intelligencer

Harvard Business Online's Jeff Stibel

Parents Say They’re Getting Control of Their Children’s Exposure to Sex and Violence in the Media – Even Online - Kaiser Family Foundation

Avatars As Communicators Of Emotions

Attention class - The Boston Globe

Basics - So Young, and So Gadgeted - NYTimes.com

» Violent Video Games Leave Impact - Psych Central News

Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic - New York Times

E-Mail Affects Brain More Than Marijuana ( Today’s technology has replaced the smo...)

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