Emotional Design for Games to Enhance Executive Functions

• In Event: Game-Based Motivational Analytics and Metrics

Abstract

Objectives. The objective of this presentation is to determine whether game characters could be used to create Hot executive functions games, and whether such games would enhance executive functions outcomes compared to a cool executive functions variant of the same game.

Theoretical Framework. Executive Functions are a set of fundamental cognitive processes required to plan, monitor and control cognition, behavior and emotions in order to remain goal-oriented (Diamond & Lee, 2011). Executive functions have been shown to predict academic success in children (St Clair-Thompson & Gathercole, 2006). Emotional design is the deliberate inclusion of design elements that enhance outcomes of an intervention by inducing specific emotions (AUTHOR, 2016). In the context of executive functions training, emotional design can be used to design Hot executive functions versus Cool executive functions interventions – Hot executive functions, involving processes that are elicited in emotionally salient contexts (Zelazo & Müller, 2002) and Cool executive functions, involving processes in decontextualized and abstract situations. Research has shown that using Hot executive functions interventions that are more emotionally activating will result in better learning compared to Cool executive functions (Zelazo & Carlson, 2012).

Methods. Three experiments with a total of 513 participants (middle and high school aged children) used a forced choice paradigm to identify two different designs of game characters, one that was able to induce high emotion arousal, and another that induced low emotion arousal. Participants were randomly assigned to either play an executive functions training game designed for high emotion arousal using results from the first set of studies (Hot executive functions game), or to a variant of the same executive functions training game that was designed to have low emotion arousal (Cool executive functions game). Participants played the game for 20 minutes, executive functions was measured using the Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) task, a standard measure of executive functions (Zelazo, 2006) that was given as pretest and again as posttest. Game user logs recorded players in-game performance.

Results. ANCOVA results indicated a significant main effect of hot vs. cool conditions (partial eta squared = .02). The hot condition had significantly greater average posttest scores than the cool condition. There was also a significant age by condition interaction (partial eta squared = .02), indicating that higher gains were especially seen for older adolescents. Finally, the Hot executive functions version of the game was more effective for the adolescents with high initial levels of executive functions.

Scientific or Scholarly Significance. Our game can train executive functions even with a very short treatment time of twenty minutes, and that emotional design can be successfully used to induce emotions that have effects on cognitive outcomes. Results also showed that emotionally more arousing treatments are more effective than less arousing treatments for executive functions training, especially for older youth.

Author

• Jan L. Plass, New York University