Narrative in Game Interventions for Training Social Emotional Skills
Summary
Social emotional skills are very important in children. The lack of these skills can lead to negative developmental outcomes. A good way to improve these skills in children is by using behavioral game interventions. However, getting a high learning gain and motivation in a child is challenging. Narrative could be a possible solution, as adding a story to a game can help with motivation, immersion, empathy, and even learning gain. This study looks at the possibility of using narrative as a way to improve the learning gain in a game intervention for training social emotional skills. This was done using an experiment where participants played a version of a game with a story or a version of a game without a story. Before and after the game the participants filled in a questionnaire so that the motivation and learning gain could be measured. Even though the results were not significant, the results still showed a trend that adding narrative to a game could still improve the motivation of the player. For the learning gain more testing has to be done. It was expected to see positive learning gains after playing the game, but this was not the case. The results showed negative learning gains for most of the participants. The data showed some significant positive correlations between motivational data, which is reason for future research. More research has to be done to see if narrative can help participants improve their learning gain in a game intervention for training social emotional skills.