Videogames and Aggression in Teenagers

Victor Sazonov (Russia). Video Games and Aggression in Teenagers. Mr. Sazonov works as a psychologist at the Obninsk Linguistic College and worked on this research from July 1996 to June 1997. Mr. Sazonov conducted a survey of 200 tenth and eleventh graders in Moscow (94 boys and 106 girls), in which they were asked to estimate the total amount of time they spent playing video games each week and which games were the most popular. Aggression was also assessed using two measures, the first dealing with manifest physical aggression and the second with aggressive behavioural delinquency. The data collected showed that 62% of teenagers spend at least one hour a week playing video games, with 10% spending over seven hours on them. Girls tended to play less than boys (1.6 and 2.8 hours on average respectively). Eight of the ten most popular games require the player to perform acts of a violent nature. Boys also scored higher on the index of aggressive behavioural delinquency, with a mean of 7.0 compared to 4.6 for girls. The results of the correlation analysis between time spent playing video games and measures of aggression were mixed. No relation was found between manifest physical aggression and time spent on the games, although in the case of aggressive behavioural delinquency the link was significant, which seems to indicate that aggressive teenagers spend more time playing video games. While the lack of significant correlations between violent games and aggression suggest that video games may not in fact be as great a menace as their critics suggest, Mr. Sazonov admits that these findings may be influenced by the high number of teenagers who do not play games at all or play relatively little. He also suggests that the abstract nature of the violence in games (often directed against aliens or spaceships) may make it less of a risk than the more realistic violence seen on television. In summary, however, he concludes that his results provide more support for the theories saying that violent video games provide a stimulus to violent action, than for those which suggest that they may help defuse violent tendencies.

Weak Senses as a Type of Semantic Information

'Weak senses' are a specific type of semantic information as opposed to assertions and presuppositions. The universal trait of weak senses is that they assume 'if' modality in negative contexts. In addition they exhibit several other diagnostic properties, e.g. they fill at least one of their valency places with a semantic element sensitive to negation (i.e. with an assertion or other weak sense), they normally do not fall within the scope of functors, do not play any role in causal relations, and resist intensification. As weak senses are widespread in lexical, grammatical and referential semantics, this notion holds the clue to phenomena as diverse as the oppositions little - a little, few - a few, edva ('hardly') - cut' ('slightly), where a little, a few, cut, convey 'weakly' approximately what little, few, and edva do in an assertive way, the semantics of the Russian perfect aspect, and the formation rules for conjunction strings. Zeldovich outlines a typology of weak senses, the main distinction being between weak senses unilaterally dependent upon the truthfulness of what they saturate their valency with, and weak senses exerting their own influence on the main situation. The latter, called, non-trivial, are instantiated by existential quantifiers involved in the semantics of indefinite pronouns, iterative verbs, etc.