Magical flight and monstrous stress: technologies of absorption and mental wellness in Azeroth.

Videogame players commonly report reaching deeply "immersive" states of consciousness, in some cases growing to feel like they actually are their characters and really in the game, with such fantastic characters and places potentially only loosely connected to offline selves and realities. In the current investigation, we use interview and survey data to examine the effects of such "dissociative" experiences on players of the popular online videogame, World of Warcraft (WoW). Of particular interest are ways in which WoW players' emotional identification with in-game second selves can lead either to better mental well-being, through relaxation and satisfying positive stress, or, alternatively, to risky addiction-like experiences.

Emotional responsivity in young children with Williams syndrome.

The hypothesis that young children with Williams syndrome show higher rates of emotional responsivity relative to other children with developmental disabilities was explored. Performance of 23 young children with Williams syndrome and 30 MA-matched children with developmental disabilities of nonspecific etiologies was compared on an adaptation of Repacholi and Gopnik's (1997) "Yummy-Yucky" task. Results show that children with Williams syndrome were more likely to mimic and/or imitate facial affect and vocalizations than children in the mixed comparison group.

Temperament and behaviour problems in young children with Down syndrome at 12, 30, and 45 months.

Though cross-sectional studies have yielded important information regarding the trajectory of psychopathology in middle childhood and adolescence in Down syndrome, there has been little exploration of maladaptive behaviour in the earliest years of development. In this study, we explore the emergence of maladaptive behaviour in young children with Down syndrome (n=24) and a mental age-matched comparison group (n=33) of young children with developmental disabilities of mixed etiologies. Behavioural data (Bayley Scales of Infant Development, Infant Temperament Questionnaire, Achenbach's Child Behaviour Checklist) were collected for children in each group at 12 months, 30 months, and 45 months.

Neuropsychological correlates of word identification in Down syndrome.

In order to better understand the neuropsychological underpinnings of the relative strength in word identification in individuals with Down syndrome, the performance of children and adolescents with Down syndrome (N=29) was compared to the performance of a nonverbal-IQ matched group of children and adolescents with developmental disabilities of mixed etiologies (N=20) on measures letter/word identification and cognitive-linguistic functioning. Though no between-group differences were observed for letter/word identification or visual processing performance, individuals with Down syndrome showed significantly poorer verbal short-term memory and receptive vocabulary skills. In terms of neuropsychological correlates of letter/word identification, significant linear associations were observed between letter/word identification (K-ABC reading/decoding) and verbal short-term memory (K-ABC number recall), as well as receptive vocabulary (PPVT-III) and visual processing (MVPT-R) in both groups.