IntroductionPrevious research has shown that gamers dreams are

associated with less threatening content but also that they don't consider such dreams nightmares or find them to be scary (Gackenbach & Kuruvilla,2008a). It is likely that gamers who play combat centric action type video games, practice quick reactions in theatening situations, so that when the gamer experiences a threat in a dream, its not only automatic but empowering instead of intimidating. The original research was conducted using military personnel (Gackenbach, Ellerman & Hall, 2011) and found gamers better able to respond to threat in their dreams than their cohorts who rarely gamed when controlling for common predictors of nightmares, (emotional reactivity and history of trauma). A second study on students (Gackenbach, Darlington, Ferguson & Boyes, 2013) replicated this finding in part with male gamers but found the opposite among high end female gamers. The present study is the second replication and uses First Responders (firefighters, police, paramedics, etc.) as participants as they are members of society who regularly come into contact with threat. The present study sought to explore the question of whether heavy video game play, especially that of action games, have a protective function for threat situations in dreams resulting from exposure to threat while on duty.

MethodsFor the present study research participants were gathered

from places where video gamers congregate, at first responder stations and headquarters (N=260), and finally from among MacEwan, students who qualified as first responders (N=74). Finding first responders willing to participate was difficult due to the culture that surrounds first responders which is a very tight knit community. All research was conducted by online surveys. The Prescreening Questionnaire (Davis et. al., 2007) was first. It was there to ensure that participants declare themselves as first responders and also that all pass the exclusion criterion: 18 years of age, no apparent mental-illness , no active suicidal tendencies or substance dependencies. The second measure was the Demographic Questionnaire (Smith et. al., 2007), which asked questions relating to age, gender, ethnic background as well as questions regarding participants service as a first responder. The Video Game Play History Questionnaire (Gackenbach & Rosie,2009) asked simply for participants past and current video game experiences, being number and types of games played over their life, as well as ones played as recently as prior to participating in this study . The fourth measure is the Emotional Reactivity and Numbing Scale (ENRS), a 62 item measure developed by Orsillo et. al.(2007) to gauge numbing and hyperarousability as these are both known aspects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Items here were split into five subcategories: Positive subscale, sad subscale, general subscale, anger subscale and fear subscale.

The next to be administered is the Trauma Inventory, a 38 item scale adapted from Eng et al.(2005), it enquires about the incidence and intensity of nine types of trauma, including: physical assault, recurrent emotional abuse, criminal victimization, negligent energy, cultural violence, natural disasters and other types. On this inventory a question of whether nightmares occurred after each trauma was added. The Recent and Impactful Dream Recording Scale (Lee, 2009) simply asks for participants to recall their most recent dream and then an impactful one which they believe deals with their time as a First Responder. The final measure was the Impactful Dream Questionnaire (Zadra et. al.,2006), with the first part asking participants about 15 emotions and their intensity within the impactful dream, and the second part asks participants evaluate their dream in terms of various impactful dimensions (Busink & Kuiken, 1996).

ResultsIn total 132 first responders got through prescreening and

participated in the online study, with 60 filling out the questionnaires and 27 participants responded with dreams. This high drop out rate could be attributed to the very type of work that first responders must engage in. They may have found it uncomfortable to answer these questions. Also test-fatigue may have contributed to the dropout rate. The collected dreams were content analyzed using Revosoua and Valli’s (2000) threat simulation method. Sex by gamer group ANCOVA’s were computed on these scores with emotional reactivity subscale scores and past trauma sum as covariates. Two interactions are portrayed below.

The above figure, depicts the likelihood of threats coded in dreams as being objective in nature (left) and the number of targets of threat in the dream (right). There is a large gender difference. Females experienced more objective threat and more targets of threat when at the high end of gaming but less at the low end of gaming. This parallels findings with the student population (Gackenbach, et al, 2013) regarding gender. Several things may account for this effect: types of games played, gender based stereotype threats, social aspects of gaming, and female responses to threat as tend and befriend rather than fight or flight. These are being explored in our lab.

Another finding worth noting is the self reported intensity of nightmares following traumas among participants. We found that females reported much less intensity in their nightmares than males, and that high end gamers reported more intense nightmares than low end. This is possibly due to the fact that games containing a lot of fast paced action, such as First Person Shooters and Action-Adventures, are generally considered much more “intense” but also result in the strongest effects in terms of nightmare protection. Thus we might suggest that games played, to the extent that they influence the dream content, account for this finding. This interpretation is backed up by higher ratings of First Person Shooters as preferred more and played more frequently by males than by females who preferred them less and played less frequently. This effect overall bears further scrutiny.

DiscussionThe data found from first responder dream

reports supports the hypothesis put forth by Gackenbach et al (2011) in males. That is, heavy video game play seems to have a protective function for threat situations in dreams including those resulting from stress in the line of duty. The strong gender difference seen in females can be attributed to any of several possible things beginning with types of games played. This is due to the fact that high action games elicit the strongest effect and we found that these females typically play these games less than males. Social context is another possible reason for the disparity, as females when they do play high action games, tend to engage in less multiplayer, which may enhance the protection effect through peer approval and defensive behaviours learned for males. Relatedly female gamers report considerable resistance from males about their play. As well, in other research, we found that heavy Facebooking and general social media use was associated with two types of nightmares (Gackenbach & Boyes, 2013). Also stereotype threat may account for this finding. That is the tendency for unconscious stereotypes to affect behavior in situations where there are salient. In this case females are stereotyped as passive and non-combative, this would undermine any benefits from practicing fighting during daytime gaming combat on subsequent dreams. Finally, there is a suggestion that women my not use the fight or flight response to stress but rather a tend and befriend response, which is more consistent with their prescribed sex roles. These findings may have an impact on the development and future of Virtual Reality therapies as well as the application in protecting PTSD sufferers from one of the hallmarks of the disorder, the vivid re-traumatizing nightmare.

Some limitations in the study was the small number of first responders who actually submitted dreams. Additionally, the demographic of first responders as gamers may be limited due to age. First responders are a tight knit community with a life long commitment. Thus younger, game playing ones are hard to find. Future research should investigate the finding of self reported nightmare intensity among high end gamers, as well as further exploration of the large gender disparity seen in this and one previous study (Gackenbach, et al, 2013).

Jayne Gackenbach & Carson FlockhartGrant MacEwan University

Nightmare Protection Thesis of Video Game Play in First Responders

AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank Grant MacEwan University for sponsoring this research. We would also like to thank all the First Responders for participating and for doing what they do every day.

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High Numbers Mean More Targets

Poster presented at the 2013 meeting of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, Virginia Beach, VA