Research Update

Today, our paper on the factors supporting the judgment of humanness a human will do over his partner in a situation of computer-mediated communication got accepted with revision. And the comments of the Reviewers were honestly very good (not to say elogious for one of them at least!). And that is pretty good for us, because we got accepted with revision in PLoS ONE ! Meaning, we are climbing pretty well in terms of Impact Factor ! Actually, to be honest, it will be once the revision will be made, one of the papers on CMC published in the highest journal ! As well, the fact that we are now able to publish in journals with this Impact Factor means that the field is getting mature, and that people in general science become more and more ready to hear about what people working on cyberbehavior have to say. This paper is part of Catherine's Master degree, which is getting better and better each month it seems ... More to come soon, keep tuned !

Literature Update

A paper published in Science Express about the effect of having constant access to information technology such as Internet or Google on the cognitive strategy we used to retrieve information stored in our memory. The paper itself is there:

Google effect on Memory

And there is also a comment on it in Science:

Comment from Science

On another topic, the TV interview went ok (they called me in the morning for an interview at 13h ... always great when you have "plenty" of time to get ready, somehow ...).

Comment

Even if new classifications have been proposed in the last 2 decades, the old classification of "players" of Bartle is still relevant. Bartle divided the players of video-game and virtual spaces in 4 categories, alongside two axes: an action/interaction axe (for those interested into the history of tools of personality evaluation, or on the history of things such as ther MMPI scale, we are close to the concepts of Tellegen of narrow vs. extended, of internal vs. external focus), and a others/world axe (akin to a human/environment axe). The four categories were: "achievers" (action/others), "socializers" (interaction/others), "explorers" (interaction/world), and "builders" (action/world). Latter on, he added a third axe to go with 8 categories (including the Second Life highly popular "griefers", or the World of Warcraft as popular "killers"). However, the 8 categories classification somehow works less than the original 4 categories, which I think is still the best so far ...

Something else, my colleague Lynn Köller from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Florida, lucky people !) pointed to me today a very interesting paper which document how actual people "perceive" the usefulness of e-media support, in this case how patients perceived the usefulness of online electronic medical records.

Winkelman WJ, Leornard KJ, Rossos PG (2005) Patient-perceived usefulness of online electronic medical records: employing grounded theory in the development of information and communication technologies for use by patients living with chronic illness. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 12:306-314.

Lab Update

Finally, I have a Twitter ! So, if you are interested, you can tweet with me at @matthieuguitton on Twitter ... And "follow" me there to follow me here, so you can get updated when we have new things to say here !

Comment

On Facebook ... and on Facebook Credits. Facebook Credits were around since some times already, and were used as a possible choice to pay various "side services" of Facebook, typically some games. However, since July 1st, they are the only and mandatory currency for any application using the Facebook plateform. With the ambition to have them used to buy songs, or movies online, Facebook clearly want to push the Facebook Credits as the main virtual currency. And with taking 30% on each transaction, Facebook would generate a lot more money. Yes. And no.

Let's remember what happened with the Linden Dollars of the famous Linden Labs star application, Second Life. When people began to actually win so much money inside the world of Second Life and to convert it in real money, when people exchanged currency via Second Life, some governments began to be clearly annoyed. Leading up to the taxation of Linden Dollars inside the European Union. So, what if Facebook Credits become so popular that they actually get to have the different government looking at all that a bit more closely ? And add, let's say, a 10% taxe over the already 30% of taxe of Facebook ? Somehow, using this virtual money to get virtual services would cost more than using a real money to get real services ... And during all this time, all the other players of the cyberspace will be playing soccer in the courtyard and not try to develop another (virtual) currency to compete ? Like the Google Credits ? All that will be interesting to observe in the future, and to observe how it will affect us all ...

Comment

The latest Impact Factor of Computers in Human Behavior is at 1.86, and that is not bad at all for a hyper-specialized journal. Just for comparison, JASA (the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America - the best journal in the field of acoustic research) is at 1.52 ... if we compare with a "specialised" journal with a broader, more biomedical-oriented readership, we get Hearing Research with 2.4 ...

Ideally, if the field gets mature enough, we should expect Computers in Human Behavior to grow slightly above 2 (a nice 2.5 would be amazing). If it grows more, the problem would be that the pressure to publish would increase probably in such way that new journals would emerge, dropping the Impact Factor down again ... So, an acceptable stable level would be around 2 something probably. Of course, since we publish a lot there, the more the better. Well, anyway, each time people quote our papers, that increase mechanically the Impact Factor.

Cyberworlds

Following the recent lab discussions, here are a brunch of links (thank you Anna J ). So, first links, some video of the Star Trek holodecks. Connected with the talk we had two days ago.

Holodeck 1
Holodeck 2

Then, another interesting video:

Japan Virtual Pop Star

And finally, as Anna stated: "now we can get addicted for free!":

WoW for free