Video game play as nightmare protection: A preliminary inquiry with military gamers.

Abstract

Soldiers who play video games to varying degrees were solicited to fill out a survey on dreams and gaming. A prescreening filtered out those who were not soldiers, who did not game and who were suffering from various psychological problems in the last six months. The remaining soldiers filled out these inventories; general and military demographics, history of video game play, Emotional Reactivity and Numbing Scale (ERNS), and a Trauma Inventory. They were then asked to provide two dreams, one recent and one that was impactful from their military service. Following the military dream they filled out Impactful Dreams Questionnaire (IDQ) about that dream only. Dream content analysis was conducted using threat simulation, war content and lucid/control/gaming content. High and low end frequency gamer groups were identified and compared on these dream content scales. Because the nightmare literature shows that affect load and distress are predictors of nightmare suffering. ERNS and Trauma history were covariates in the ANCOVA's on gamer group x dream type. It was found that the high end gaming group exhibited less threat and war content in their military dreams than the low end group.

Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming

“…Many dream theorists have highlighted the experiential aspect of dreaming, such as Jung, Rogers, and Gendlin, as discussed in a recent article by Ellis (2014) . In her work, Ellis shows how re-entering and bodily experiencing a dream can enable the dreamwork to move forward, perhaps by empowering the dreamer to “manipulate their internal imagery system.” There are parallels here between this Focus-Oriented Dreamwork (FOD) and Gackenbach’s findings that high-end gamers seem to have a defense mechanism in their dreams whereby when they have dreams of being attacked they are able to respond in kind because they have rehearsed this behavior in waking life ( Gackenbach et al, 2011 , 2013 ). What FOD clients and high-end gamers have in common is that they have rehearsed their adaptive behaviors during wakefulness in lived, bodily, immersive experiences, which then translate into their dream behaviors.…”

A New Measure of Hallucinatory States and a Discussion of REM Sleep Dreaming as a Virtual Laboratory for the Rehearsal of Embodied Cognition

“…Lucid dreaming has in the past been defined either as a state of dreaming in which the faculty to reflect upon one's own dream experiences is restored, and/or as a state where one is able to actively change and control dream content (Bourke & Shaw, 2014;Gackenbach, Ellerman, & Hall, 2011;Spoormaker, Schredl, & Bout, 2006): It is believed to be closely related (both functionally and physiologically) to executive functions and metacognitions (Dresler et al, 2012;Filevich, Dresler, Brick, & Kuhn, 2015;Hobson, 2009). Lucid dreams have been shown to differ from normal dreams with regard to four factors: (a) insight into the fact that one is dreaming, (b) the level of thoughts in which one is engaging, (c) control over dream content, and (d) in terms of dissociation, that is, taking an outside perspective on dream events .…”

Comparing the Effects of Real Versus Simulated Violence on Dream Imagery

“…These results on decreases in threatening imagery after gaming were also replicated with military gamers. 32 Weber et al 33 investigated neural activity in regards to aggression and threat in gamers while playing, and reporting neural patterns representative of aggressive cognition and behavior. The authors suggest that this aggressiveness may be due to the fear of virtual danger.…”