The World Wide Wait: Exploring Physiological and Behavioral Effects of Download Speed

The Effects of Technological Advancement and Violent Content in Video Games on Players’ Feelings of Presence, Involvement, Physiological Arousal, and Aggression

“…In the absence of numerous studies specifically investigating the effects of video game advancement, research exploring the impact of technological form variables in other media can inform the present research (see Detenber, Simons, & Reiss, 2000). For example, increased interactivity (Sundar, Kalyanaraman, & Brown, 2003), animation (e.g., Lang, Borse, Wise, & David, 2002; Li & Bukovac, 1999; Sundar & Kalyanaraman, 2004), and download speed (Sundar & Wagner, 2002) have all been found to impact the effects of Web content on users. Similarly, increased audio and visual fidelity affects responses to film and television (Bracken, 2005; Reeves & Nass, 1996).…”

Situational Factors Competing for Attention

“…The excitation that was elicited by sexual TV content might be transferred to the homework task rather than to the degree of attention given to Part 3. Third, it is worth noting that most previous studies found significant excitation transfer effects using affective (e.g., perceived enjoyment, Mattes & Cantor, 1982) or behavioral measures (e.g., web-browsing activity, Sundar & Wagner, 2002). The possibility that this theory is less applicable to cognitive measures as recognition is worth examining.…”

“…Because arousal takes a relatively long time to disappear, some de-gree of residual excitation may be present even when the audience is no longer exposed to the stimulus. The theory has found support in a wide range of contexts (e.g., advertisements, films, and websites) (Perry, 2001;Sparks, 1991;Sundar & Wagner, 2002). Based on this theory, we can hypothesize an interaction between sequence and the degree of sexually explicit content: Sexually explicit materials should influence not only recognition of the material itself but also that of content following it.…”