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Using video games to understand sex differences in attentional biases for weapons

Attentional biases for threatening stimuli of various kinds have been repeatedly demonstrated. More recently, sex differences in the strength of visual biases for weapons have been observed, with men exhibiting stronger biases than do women. In the current study we further explored this sex differen...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: van Heyst, Gemma, Shin, Myoungju, Sulikowski, Danielle
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9778952/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36548291
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279360
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author van Heyst, Gemma
Shin, Myoungju
Sulikowski, Danielle
author_facet van Heyst, Gemma
Shin, Myoungju
Sulikowski, Danielle
author_sort van Heyst, Gemma
collection PubMed
description Attentional biases for threatening stimuli of various kinds have been repeatedly demonstrated. More recently, sex differences in the strength of visual biases for weapons have been observed, with men exhibiting stronger biases than do women. In the current study we further explored this sex difference, by examining how immediate vicarious experience with weapons (via playing a violent video game compared to playing a non-violent video game) affected the visual attention for weapons. We found that the basic visual bias for weapons compared to non-weapons was replicated, as was the sex difference in the strength of this bias. We also observed that the context produced by playing a violent video game prior to the visual search task, produced some sex differences in responding that were not present after playing the nonviolent video game, providing modest evidence that men may be more prone to cognitive behavioural effects of violent video game play. Interestingly, there was some evidence that both sexes de-prioritised non-weapons during search after playing the violent, relative to the non-violent, video game. We recommend that future studies investigate the task dynamics that may have led to this effect.
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spelling pubmed-97789522022-12-23 Using video games to understand sex differences in attentional biases for weapons van Heyst, Gemma Shin, Myoungju Sulikowski, Danielle PLoS One Research Article Attentional biases for threatening stimuli of various kinds have been repeatedly demonstrated. More recently, sex differences in the strength of visual biases for weapons have been observed, with men exhibiting stronger biases than do women. In the current study we further explored this sex difference, by examining how immediate vicarious experience with weapons (via playing a violent video game compared to playing a non-violent video game) affected the visual attention for weapons. We found that the basic visual bias for weapons compared to non-weapons was replicated, as was the sex difference in the strength of this bias. We also observed that the context produced by playing a violent video game prior to the visual search task, produced some sex differences in responding that were not present after playing the nonviolent video game, providing modest evidence that men may be more prone to cognitive behavioural effects of violent video game play. Interestingly, there was some evidence that both sexes de-prioritised non-weapons during search after playing the violent, relative to the non-violent, video game. We recommend that future studies investigate the task dynamics that may have led to this effect. Public Library of Science 2022-12-22 /pmc/articles/PMC9778952/ /pubmed/36548291 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279360 Text en © 2022 van Heyst et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
van Heyst, Gemma
Shin, Myoungju
Sulikowski, Danielle
Using video games to understand sex differences in attentional biases for weapons
title Using video games to understand sex differences in attentional biases for weapons
title_full Using video games to understand sex differences in attentional biases for weapons
title_fullStr Using video games to understand sex differences in attentional biases for weapons
title_full_unstemmed Using video games to understand sex differences in attentional biases for weapons
title_short Using video games to understand sex differences in attentional biases for weapons
title_sort using video games to understand sex differences in attentional biases for weapons
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9778952/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36548291
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279360
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