Nan Yang

Video games are popular and ubiquitous aspects of human culture, but their relationships to psychological and neurophysiological traits have yet to be analyzed in social-evolutionary frameworks. We examined the relationships of video game usage, motivations, and preferences with autistic and schizotypal traits and two aspects of neurophysiology, reaction time and targeting time. Participants completed the Autism Quotient, Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire, a Video Game Usage Questionnaire, and two neurophysiological tasks. We tested in particular the hypotheses, motivated by theory and previous work, that: participants with higher autism scores would play video games more, and participants with higher schizotypy scores would play video games less; and autism and positive schizotypy would be associated with opposite patterns of video game use, preferences and motivations. Females, but not males, with higher autism scores played more video games, and exhibited evidence of relatively male-typical video game genre preferences and motivations. By contrast, positive schizotypy was associated with reduced video game use in both genders, for several measures of game use frequency. In line with previous findings, males played video game more than females did overall, preferred action video games, and exhibited faster reaction and targeting times. Females preferred Puzzle and Social Simulation games. Faster reaction and targeting times were associated with gaming motives related to skill development and building behavior. These findings show that gaming use and patterns reflect aspects of psychology, and gender, related to social cognition and imagination, as well as aspects of neurophysiology. More generally, the results suggest that video game use is notably affected by levels of autistic and schizotypal traits, and that video games may provide an evolutionarily novel medium for imaginative play in which immersive play experiences can be decoupled from social interaction.

Teachers' work engagement is regarded as a critical issue in educational contexts, so the emotional factors and personality traits, and their effects on teacher engagement have drawn the attention of investigators. This study seeks to investigate the relationship between teachers' emotional intelligence, ambiguity tolerance, and work engagement. Moreover, this study tries to investigate the contribution of emotional intelligence and ambiguity tolerance to teachers' work engagement. To do so, 322 teachers participated in this study. Schutte's Self Report Emotional Intelligence Test, Multiple Stimulus Types Ambiguity Tolerance Scale-II, and Self-report engagement Questionnaire were used in this study. The statistical techniques used in this study are the Spearman Rho test and ANOVA. The findings showed that there are significant correlations between work engagement, emotional intelligence, and ambiguity tolerance. Comparing the predictability power, teachers' emotional intelligence proved to have a higher index compared to their index of ambiguity tolerance. This study concluded that emotionally intelligent teachers and teachers with higher levels of ambiguity tolerance are more engaged in the EFL contexts. Moreover, the study has some pedagogical implications and suggestions for different teacher educators, policy-makers, and advisors. The ideas can improve their awareness of teachers' emotional intelligence, ambiguity tolerance, and work engagement in educational environments.