The purpose of the study was to examine the association between affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and gender on cyberbullying among adolescents. Participants were 396 adolescents from Singapore with age ranging from 12 to 18 years. Adolescents responded to a survey with scales measuring both affective and cognitive empathy, and cyberbullying behavior. A three-step hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used with cyberbullying scores as the dependent variable. Gender was dummy coded and both affective and cognitive empathy were centered using the sample mean prior to creating interaction terms and entering them into the regression equations. The testing, probing and interpretation of interaction effects followed established statistical procedures. Results from hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated a significant three-way interaction. At low affective empathy, both boys and girls who also had low cognitive empathy had higher scores on cyberbullying than those who had high cognitive empathy. This pattern of results was similarly found for boys at high affective empathy. However, for girls, high or low levels of cognitive empathy resulted in similar levels of cyberbullying. Implications of these findings include the need for empathy training and the importance of positive caregiver-child relationships in reducing cyberbullying behavior among adolescents.

No abstract

No abstract

The confluence of mobile content sharing and pervasive gaming yields new opportunities for developing novel applications on mobile devices. Yet, studies on users" attitudes and behaviors related to mobile gaming, content sharing and retrieval activities (referred simply as content sharing and gaming) have been lacking. For this reason, the objectives of this paper are three-fold. One, it introduces Indagator, an application which incorporates multiplayer, pervasive gaming elements into mobile content sharing activities. Two, it seeks to uncover the motivations for content sharing within a game-based environment. Three, it aims to identify types of users who are motivated to use Indagator for content sharing. Informed by the uses and gratifications paradigm, a survey was designed and administered to 203 undergraduate and graduate students from two large universities.The findings revealed that perceived gratification factors such as information discovery, entertainment, information quality, socialization, and relationship maintenance, and demographic variables such basic familiarity with features of mobile communication devices, and IT-related backgrounds were significant in predicting intention to use mobile sharing and gaming applications such as Indagator. However, age, gender, and the personal status gratification factor were nonsignificant predictors. This paper concludes by presenting the implications, limitations and future research directions.

Background: There has been research on the use of offl ine video games for therapeutic purposes but online video game therapy is still fairly under-researched. Online therapeutic interventions have only recently included a gaming component. Hence, this review represents a timely fi rst step toward taking advantage of these recent technological and cultural innovations, particularly for the treatment of special-needs groups such as the young, the elderly and people with various conditions such as ADHD, anxiety and autism spectrum disorders. Material: A review integrating research fi ndings on two technological advances was conducted: the home computer boom of the 1980s, which triggered a fl ood of research on therapeutic video games for the treatment of various mental health conditions; and the rise of the internet in the 1990s, which caused computers to be seen as conduits for therapeutic interaction rather than replacements for the therapist. Discussion: We discuss how video games and the internet can now be combined in therapeutic interventions, as attested by a consideration of pioneering studies. Conclusion: Future research into online video game therapy for mental health concerns might focus on two broad types of game: simple society games, which are accessible and enjoyable to players of all ages, and online worlds, which offer a unique opportunity for narrative content and immersive remote interaction with therapists and fellow patients. Both genres might be used for assessment and training purposes, and provide an unlimited platform for social interaction. The mental health community can benefi t from more collaborative efforts between therapists and engineers, making such innovations a reality.