Parsons - Cyberpsychology and the Brain

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Thomas D. Parsons 2017

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First published 2017

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I dedicate this book to a monkey, a bearcat, a bugaboo, and a beagle. Together we make a family.

While cyberpsychology is a relatively new discipline, it is one that is growing at an alarming rate. Perhaps this is due to the fact that humans are witnessing a time of rapid progress in an increasingly connected world. As a result, we have seen the emergence of a number of cyberpsychology-related societies, conferences, journals, and academic-level texts. Interestingly, none of these academic journals or books on cyberpsychology directly addresses the rapid progress in neuroscience. There are now dozens of laboratories around the world that have converged to investigate neurocognitive, affective, and social questions. While there is a great deal of work in cyberpsychology that deals with neural correlates of persons interacting with technology and neuroscientific investigations of cyberpsychology issues, there is no text that pulls together this material for cyberpsychologists. This book is a first attempt at bringing together this information for researchers and students in cyberpsychology.

To encourage the inclusion of brain science research in the cyberpsychology domain, this book proposes a framework for integrating neuroscience and cyberpsychology for the study of social, cognitive, and affective processes and the neural systems that support them. Given these emphases, a brain-based cyberpsychology can be understood as a branch of psychology that studies (1) the neurocognitive, affective, and social aspects of humans interacting with technology and (2) affective computing aspects of humans interacting with devices/systems that incorporate computation. As such, a cyberpsychologist working from a brain-based cyberpsychological framework studies both the ways in which persons make use of devices and the neurocognitive processes, motivations, intentions, behavioral outcomes, and effects of online and offline use of technology. Research in a brain-based cyberpsychology framework ranges from studies with offline platforms (using desktop computers, word processors, virtual/augmented reality, gaming consoles, and statistics packages), to online Internet use (how we engage in online banking, shopping, dating, and gaming), to mobile phones. These studies emphasize the study of neurocognitive, affective, and social processing behaviors in relation to the ways in which persons use and communicate via technological devices. Cyberpsychologists view these devices as tools that either facilitate or impede human interaction and communication.

Cyberpsychology has a lot to offer human neuroscience research. Specifically, there is increasing acknowledgment among social, cognitive, and affective neuroscientists that there is a need to move beyond the static stimulus presentations found in their investigations of human neurocognition. While many of the pioneering paradigms in the human neurosciences reflected a noteworthy emphasis on laboratory control and experiments that involve participants observing static stimuli that are devoid of interactions, there are increasing questions about whether knowledge gained using these static stimuli will generalize to the social, cognitive, and affective processes found in everyday activities. Cyberpsychologists can aid these neuroscientists by introducing them to the more ecologically valid scenarios found in cyberpsychology simulations (e.g., virtual and augmented reality).

In addition to the positive impact that cyberpsychology stimuli and platforms can have on the human neurosciences, there is a great deal that cyberpsychology can gain from the cognitive, affective, and social neurosciences. While neuroscientific research is highlighted throughout this book, many of the examples provided reflect assessments of behavioral performance. Although it can be challenging to operationalize the extent to which a stimulus approximates activities of daily living, this book gives examples of stimuli and virtual environmentbased contexts that span the implied continuum. The studies reviewed in this book are not meant to be exhaustive. Instead this review focuses on cyberpsychology research that highlights the ways in which persons respond to clinical, affective, and social stimuli in simulations that approximate real-world activities and interactions.