3 181 IN-GAME PLAY BEHAVIOURS PREDICT IMPROVEMENTS IN ANXIETY behaviours were entered as a set in the second step. The anxiety score at the three-month follow-up assessment was entered as dependent variable. Before running the regression models, statistical assumptions necessary for multiple regression (i.e., normal distribution of measurement error, homoscedasticity of the variances, linearity of the model, and multicollinearity) were tested and met. Nevertheless, bootstrapping (n = 5000) was used to ensure accurate and valid results (and taking into account the small sample size). One participant that was an outlier (z-score > |3|) on both pre-test and post-test anxiety was excluded from the analyses. RESULTS Descriptive Statistics Means and standard deviations of the study variables are presented in Table 2. Contrary to what was expected, anxiety at pre-test was not significantly associated with the in-game play behaviours during the first play-session (see Table 3). In addition, age and sex were not significantly associated with anxiety at pre-test nor with the different in-game play behaviours during the first play-session. Moderate to large correlations were found between several in-game play behaviours during the first play-session (see Table 3). Exploration was positively associated with total mindlight, and negatively associated with ceiling light attempts, hiding inside a chest, and fear attempts. Further, total mindlight was negatively associated with ceiling light attempts. Thus, a child that spent large amounts of time exploring the game environment showed longer periods of bright mindlight, fewer ceiling light attempts, and shorter periods of time hiding inside a chest and decloaking or attacking fear events. Longer periods of bright mindlight were associated with fewer ceiling light attempts. Regarding the correlations between in-game play behaviours during the first and the last play-session, Table 4 shows that none of the in-game play behaviours were associated with one another over time except for the negative association between the proportion of exploration during the first play-session and the proportion of fear attempts during the last play-session. It might be that children that explored more during the first session defeated more fear events during the game, resulting in less fear attempts needed during the last session.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw