Psychological Aspects of Cyberspace: Theory, Research, Applications: This blog contains each individual chapter from the newly published book of the same name. Readers are invited to read each chapter and comment or ask questions of the individual writers. Topics covered include privacy and trust online, internet abuse, flow states, cybertheraputic theory and techniques and sexual activities online. It’s wonderful to see an entire book on the topic of Cyberpsychology readily available online and open to discussion. Very much looking forward to reading all of these chapters.

For your eyes only: Custom interfaces make computer clicking faster, easier: University of Washington engineers discuss a new approach to software design. They propose that instead of standard off the shelf user interface designs, that by putting the user through a brief skills test a mathematically-based version of the user interface could be generated that is optimized for the user’s vision and motor abilities. This research is especially important for the disabled, elderly or anyone that has difficulty using a computer mouse.

The Effects of Background Television on the Toy Play Behavior of Very Young Children: This research study found that background television, disrupts very young children’s play behavior even when they pay little overt attention to it and even when tuned to adult themed shows. Background television was found to cause short play episode lengths, which are a marker for poor developmental outcome. These findings are important because play is directly related to healthy cognitive and social development. Related Article: TV Really Might Cause Autism

Internet users refuse to put up with intrusive ads: From 1000+ internet users sampled 59% indicated that they had stopped visiting a website because of irrelevant, annoying and intrusive online ads (including pop-ups that cover web content, loud noises and ads that were difficult to close, minimise or click away from). This study relates back to my own undergraduate research on pop-up advertisements, where I found that the more experienced a user the more likely they are to actively attempt to remove pop-ups from their online experience. Web designers need to start paying attention to research and surveys such as these, or as demonstrated, users will stop visiting certain websites completely.

If anyone has anything they’d like to contribute to the next digest, or related articles for this volume, feel free to drop me a comment or an e-mail – Sinéad.

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4

See it in action here (link: BBC news video).

For someone that does as much typing (some of this may or may not be chatting) whilst browsing the internet (all in the name of research of course), this would be a godsend. Not only would this replace my completely worn down trackpad and mini usb travel mouse, I can see this completely replacing any mouse I would ever think of using. Being able to switch between typing and navigating at such ease would be bliss.

I must have one of these. Immediately.